I’m always trying to come up with more ways to reinforce letter sounds and alphabet recognition in ways that are fun and feel more game like rather than an actual learning lesson. I have been promising my oldest a garden themed game for awhile.

Build a Scarecrow: Alphabet Garden

Competitive play:

Whomever builds their scarecrow first wins.  Pick a card from the garden if it is a clothing piece for example a shirt pick out the colored shirt you want and place it on your scarecrow.

If a player chooses the seeds card then they get to pick two more cards from the garden. 

If a player chooses the crow card then they lose a clothing piece, if they do not have a clothing piece place the crow back into the garden.

If a player chooses a vegetable, fruit, plant, or flower card, place that card on the correct sorting mat to add additional learning fun.  Say the card out loud, name the beginning letter and sound.

Co-op Play:

Remove the crow and seed cards and instead focus on picking cards out of the garden and emphasizing on each beginning sound. Sort the vegetable, fruits, plants, and flowers onto their correct sorting mats. Every time a player gets a clothing piece place it on the scarecrow to build a scarecrow or scarecrows together.  (Depending on how many you choose to print out.)

During game time we stick all of our garden cards inside of an old Halloween pumpkin bucket and pick from there. Originally I had planned on writing the letter of each playing card on the back of the card for a better visual of the beginning letter for my youngest. I forgot to do so before laminating all the cards, it still works because the picture side of the card does have the beginning letters and the written word on it.

When we start the game we stick all the playing cards into the bucket, and leave out all the scarecrow clothing pieces on a garden mat I made out of felt to go along with the game. As we pull out the scarecrow clothing cards from the bucket, we then leave those on the mat making it our discard pile, that way the pieces don’t end up back in the bucket.

The image above is the scarecrow template I made. I printed it out and laminated the image. I cut the scarecrow out.

I made 4 sorting mats to add to the learning fun.
-Plants and Flowers
-Fruits
-Vegetables
-Vegetables that are also Fruits

I have a hard time remembering the best ways to explain concepts to my daughters. Therefore I made brief definition sheets to cover key talking points during the game I could add in to add more educational value. The sheets explain what fruits, vegetables, plants, and flowers are, and also give brief description of each alphabet card organized within their categories (plants and flowers, fruits, vegetables, and vegetables that are fruits.)

I laminated the parts of the flower sheet for durability, I thought it was fitting to go along with everything else. A simple description of what the parts of a flower does, to go along with the garden theme.

The Alphabet Garden Bag I designed to go along with the game to eventually hold all mine and my daughter’s game pieces and fun definition sheets in. The Alphabet Garden bag is available to purchase at the Nana Hedgehog store on Redbubble.

I’ve been temporarily storing the pieces within a pocket folder, I’ve recently bought them in bulk for my oldest daughter to help stay organized for school. (I am a participant in Amazon Affiliates and any qualifying purchases through links I may earn a commission on at no extra cost to you.)

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