One thing to know about my oldest son is that he's always loved letters and numbers and spends probably 90% of his time playing with letters in some way. (Turns out, he's hyperlexic, which explains why he started reading before his second birthday.)
Naturally, my youngest son also gravitated towards playing with letters, which isn't surprising, given how much his older brother was into them (and still is!). After all, we have letter toys everywhere in our house.
The problem though is that he never seems to have enough letters to spell all the words and phrases he wants. He's always running out of letters. The same goes for numbers. Hence, why I also made these giant foam numbers. So, I started chopping up cardboard boxes to give him even more letters and numbers to play with.
Eventually, I put them all into this alphabet letters box. It's kind of like having a super cheap DIY movable alphabet or like making an alphabet sorting box. The boys can happily spell, sort, alphabetize, match, or whatever, all day long.
Alphabet Letters Box: What You'll Need
To make your own recycled letters and numbers busy box like that pictured here, you'll need:
- 32 compartment no spill bead organizer (or similar) - I found ours at Walmart for $5!
- Various cardboard boxes - You'll want a good variety of colors, shapes, sizes, etc. because we want a wide variety of fonts, colors, etc. to choose from for our DIY movable alphabet.
- Scissors - To cut out all the letters and numbers you want to add to your collection for the alphabet letters box.
- Permanent marker - To label the individual compartments and label the front of the box.
- Silhouette Cameo (or Cricut) and vinyl (optional) - I used this to make a custom sticker for the front of our box. Alternatively, you could just write on the front using a permanent marker.
Once you have all the materials handy, it's time to start making the alphabet sorting box.
How to Make a Recycled Alphabet & Number Busy Box for Kids
First thing you'll want to do is cut out some letters and numbers from recycled boxes. I actually did this a few months ago for my boys to play with. And the boys LOVE playing with them (but makes sense, given that J is hyperlexic)!
However, over the past few months, I was struggling with the storage of the recycled letters. And I was hoping to one day find a perfect storage container for them. Up until last week, they were lovingly stored in an old baby wipes container because, you know, I had a lot of those kicking around. But, then I found a 32 compartment no spill bead organizer at Walmart for $5 and knew it would be perfect for storing the recycled letters and numbers.
Now that I had the perfect container, it was time to label all the compartments. Using a permanent marker, I wrote the uppercase and lowercase letters in each compartment.
Since there were some empty spots leftover, I decided to write the numbers in too, knowing my boys would love that too. Some of the numbers had to partner up with another number due to the lack of enough spaces, but that's not a big deal since I hardly have enough numbers for the box yet anyway. Besides, the boys don't seem to mind that a few numbers have to share a spot.
Here's how the container looked once everything was labeled:
Now you can add the recycled letters and numbers you cut out from the cardboard boxes. The letters and numbers can be organized into their own individual spots like so:
You'll notice that I am missing some Qs and have very few numbers at this point, but searching for the missing items on our cardboard has been part of the fun. It's like a scavenger hunt for the boys to help me find some letters to fill up the box.
On the lid of the container, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the words "The Alphabet Box" from gray vinyl, as can be seen below. Alternatively, you can leave it blank or you can use a permanent marker to label the lid of the container.
Ideas for How to Use this Alphabet in a Box
After I first published this blog post, I had numerous questions about what to actually do with it.
Since J is hyperlexic and hypernumeric (I didn't know these terms at the time of publishing!), he just loves to sort letters, spell words, and arrange numbers into patterns. He also uses them as part of his second language learning. Part of the reason I initially put this box together for him was because he would frequently run out of letters to spell words that he actually wanted to spell.
K, on the other hand, enjoyed matching the letters to their corresponding spot in the box or picking up letters to identify.
Here are some more suggestions on how to use this DIY movable alphabet box:
- Sorting letters
- Practicing spelling words or sight words
- Alphabetizing or lining them up
- Building CVC words
- Identifying letters
- Sorting letters by attributes (e.g., color)
- Encouraging letter collecting
- Sorting numbers
- Spelling words seen in books
- Identifying numbers
- Exploring patterns in numbers (e.g., skip counting)
- Exploring math and counting (e.g., counting up the total of each number, creating simple math problems to solve)
- Using as part of an art project (e.g., collages, vision boards, ransom notes - just kidding)
- Comparing & contrasting different letters
- Matching letters
- Exploring environmental print
- Exploring on the light table (see here)
The possibilities really are endless here. So, feel free to use this alphabet busy box however you choose. For my boys, that's primarily collecting, sorting, spelling, lining up, and identifying letters and numbers.
Regardless, this alphabet letters box has been a lot of fun for my boys. It's like an inexpensive DIY Montessori movable alphabet or alphabet sorting box alternative.
