How to Teach the Letter U

Teaching Students to Identify the Upper and Lower Case U

Dec 31, 2008

Use these lesson ideas to teach students all about the letter U.

Teach students the letter U with fun crafts, snacks and other activities. Reinforce what the letter U looks like and sounds like. This is the last vowel in the alphabet, so remind students of each previous vowel that you have learned, and see if they can recall the two sounds that each vowel makes.

Teaching the Letter U with an Alphabet Book

Have students create an alphabet book page for the letter U. Students can draw umbrellas and a rain storm on the page with crayons or even finger paint. Children love to get messy with paint, and having them paint the letter U with their fingers will provide a great multi-sensory activity for learning the letter U.

Snacks that Teach the Letter U

For snack time, you can serve utterly delicious cookies of any sort that you like to make or purchase for the students. For a healthier snack option, you can serve Utz pretzels. You can also purchase little paper umbrellas and make a fun snack in a cup with the umbrella covering it. A great snack to put in the cop is vanilla pudding and gummy bears. This makes it look sort of like a beach in a cup.

Activities that Teach the Letter U

Have the students help you to create an interactive bulletin board for the letter U. Either draw a master or print out a master umbrella picture to make a copy for each student. Then have the students decorate each umbrella however they like. You can also have students learn to follow directions as they color their umbrellas by telling them to color stripes, polka-dots or other types of decorations.

You can then put a number on each umbrella, laminate them and put a piece of Velcro on the back. Put the other side of the Velcro on the bulletin board and have students learn to put the numbers in order. You can also teach counting backwards and skip counting with this bulletin board.

Ask students what other words they know that start with U and see if they can act them out. Have foam letter U’s to give as prizes for students who are able to guess each word that students act out. You can make these foam letters by purchasing a sheet of colored craft foam from a local craft store and cutting them out, or you can purchase the letters already made.

The copyright of the article How to Teach the Letter U in Preschool is owned by Jennifer Wagaman. Permission to republish How to Teach the Letter U in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.