Buddy has been working on letters at preschool, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for fun alphabet activities to do at home. When I saw the idea of a magnetic alphabet sensory bin on Busy Toddler’s blog, I knew Buddy would love it. He plays with his construction site sensory bin all the time, but it’s been a long time since we’ve played in our rice bin. (Read more about our construction site sensory bin and our first rice bin here.) Even though I prefer black beans as a sensory bin filler, I chose to use rice because we have more of it. We don’t really have enough black beans to hide magnetic letters well.
*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*
I started by adding magnetic letters to the bottom of our sensory tub, and then I poured rice on top. The letters were completely hidden in the rice. I also pulled out an old cake pan, and I used a washable dry erase marker to write the alphabet on it. That way, Buddy could practice matching and identifying letters as he found them.
Buddy started with our large magnet (similar to this one). He put it in the rice, but he had a hard time getting any magnets to stick. Busy Toddler used a magnet wand instead, so maybe that works better for this type of activity. Buddy ended up pulling out the magnets and sticking it to his. The magnet wasn’t an effective tool, but he still enjoyed it. 
I pulled out a couple shovels, and Buddy was ecstatic! He was thrilled that he could now dig up the letters. Buddy asked me to play with him, so we both took a shovel and found letters. 
As we found letters, we matched them up to the letters on the cake pan. I used an old bag of magnetic letters, and there were some letter repeats. Any time we found a repeated letter, we stacked them on top of the match or put it on the edge of the pan. 
It took us awhile, but eventually we found all of the letters. But Buddy was having too much fun to stop! So he took the letters off of the pan and threw them back into the rice. I set the duplicate letters aside for the second round, so we only had one of each letter. 
We didn’t bury the letters quite as much for the second round, but Buddy was just as enthusiastic about finding them. 
This activity was amazing! Buddy played with the rice and letters for 75 minutes! (That’s forever in toddler time!) Then he decided he missed his beans and construction vehicles, so I switched the bin back. And Buddy played with those for another 20 minutes! It was a mess to clean up (beans are much neater than the rice), but it was so worth it. Buddy had so much fun, and it was great letter practice.
Do you have any fun alphabet activities? Please share in the comments!
