Matching Letters on the Sidewalk Easy Recognition Activity

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Try this fun outdoor recognition activity of matching letters on the sidewalk to keep your kids active and learning this summer!

We are fully into summer here and trying to keep the kids busy.

This is a quick activity to set up outside on a nice day (in between all the rains that we’ve had).

How to Set Up the Letter Recognition Matching Activity

It’s like a giant connect the letters outside with chalk!

Bonus is the kids feel like they are just doing a fun matching activity but you are actually helping them maintain letter recognition through the summer.

What You’ll Need to Set Up Your Own Letter Recognition Activity

• Sidewalk chalk
• Cement or blacktop surface (driveway or sidewalks)

Have older kids, or you, write the letters of the alphabet on the surface.

Write two of each letter scrambled up on the cement and there you have the recognition activity ready to match.

Here a couple quick tips:

For younger kids just learning their alphabet, only do a few letters for matching. Don’t start with the entire alphabet. And do mostly letters they’re already familiar with and sneak in a few new ones, or ones they’re struggling with.

But not too many new letters so you don’t frustrate them during your recognition activity.

For kids that know most of their alphabet, go ahead and do as many letters as you can fit on the surface. I ran out of room on our sidewalk when I got to V.

I wrote a few letters at a time (A to G) and then went back and wrote them again in another color of chalk, in a mixed up order, so they weren’t side by side.

But also so they’re weren’t the entire length of the sidewalk apart.

Then I moved onto letters H to M and did the same until I ran out of room.

Recognition and Matching Letters Activity on the Sidewalk

I asked my preschooler to start with a letter I knew he knew.

“Hey George, how about you match up the G’s? Can you find the first G? Where’s the other one?”

And from there he knew what to do.

Through out the letter recognition activity, I would ask him what letter he was looking to match.

My oldest is going to be in first grade, so he is beyond learning letters, but this was still fun for him.

My preschooler is still getting the hang of letters so this recognition activity was a challenge and fun for him.

I’ve done this in the past with my oldest matching uppercase letters to lowercase letters to make it a little more difficult for him (at the time).

You could also do sight words, shapes or numbers in the same fashion.