Letter Tokens Made from Bottle Caps

This is one of the inexpensive way of creating educational materials.

How to use them?

Here are some ideas from different blogs (see references below):

For 2 year old:

1. You can pick a letter and ask your child to name it and say its sound.

2. You can use the tokens to teach counting.

For 3 year old:

2. You can make one set of upper case letters and one set of lower case letter and let your child match the letters.

3. You can make more sets of letters and use them to teach your child to spell words.

4. You can make two sets. Place all the caps face down. Turn over and find a match. If match is found, the player takes it. The player with the most caps win. Two or more players.

How to organize and store your letter tokens?

I am a neat freak, and I love to organize and think of ways to make retrieval of things easy, clutter-free and pain-free. You can use a tool box with drawers to store the letter tokens:

Additional Information:
I have become a "Garan Guni" man - Singlish for garbage collector. I am now collecting milk bottle caps to make letter tokens - also with Florian's help (today he helped me to collect 2 caps from his work canteen. People were wondering what a weirdo he was!) It is his way of showing involvement in the activities planning and education of Joshua, so that I don't feel alone in this journey and I really appreciate his sweet gestures. In our family, Florian drinks milk like drinking water. Thus, it is very easy for me to accumulate milk bottle caps. You can also use mineral bottle caps.

Simply use a permanent ink marker to write the letter on each bottle cap.

You can also make them very attactive by using different colours or even print the letter and stick it on the letter:

You can find the template here:

http://www.artistshelpingchildren.org/kidscraftsactivitiesblog/2011/02/making-an-alphabet-letters-memory-game-from-bottle-caps-with-printables-and-instructions-for-kids/

Being a working mom, I tend to cut the frills and go for simplicity - black and white. I believe it is also less distracting for the child.

References:
http://www.peakblog.org/learning-with-bottle-caps/

http://littlefingersbigdreams.blogspot.com/2010/07/bottle-cap-letters.html

http://www.artistshelpingchildren.org/kidscraftsactivitiesblog/2011/02/making-an-alphabet-letters-memory-game-from-bottle-caps-with-printables-and-instructions-for-kids/