ABC Game Ideas for Kids

Help kids in preschool and kindergarten learn their letters or upper elementary kids practice their alphabet skills using ABC game ideas for kids. You can create your own alphabet games or play creative ABC games indoors, outdoors, and even online to teach letters and phonics.

Simple Alphabet Games for Kids

Children's alphabet games are simple and straightforward so the focus is on letter learning. ABC games for kids can be active or include printable phonics worksheets to teach different aspects of the alphabet including:

• Individual letters
• Correct order of the letters
• Corresponding capital and lowercase letters
• The sound of each letter
• Words that can be created with each letter

Printable Connect-the-Alphabet Worksheets

Print one of these fun connect-the-alphabet, or ABC dot-to-dot, PDF worksheets. Children connect the dots by matching the letters in the correct alphabetical order to draw the picture. Click on the worksheet to download and print using the Adobe guide if you have any trouble.

Alphabet Sequencing Challenge

Time your child in this sequencing challenge when they are first learning the alphabet then again after they've mastered the order of the letters to show how much they've learned. Write each letter of the alphabet on an index card. Scramble the index cards up then have children put the alphabet in the correct order. You can also use this challenge as a game where the fastest player wins.

Alphabet Picture Matching

Use clipart, magazine images, or printable alphabet coloring pages to create a simple letter and picture matching game.

1. Write each letter on an index card.
2. Cut out various pictures so you have at least one picture that starts with each letter. You can do a few letters or the entire alphabet in one game.
3. Mix up all the pictures in the center of your play area and hand a few letter cards to each child.
4. Kids must match each picture to its beginning letter. For example, if you have pictures of a cat, cake, apple, and ant, ant and apple would be matched to the letter A, and cat and cake would be matched to the letter C.
5. The first person who can match all the pictures to their corresponding letters wins.

DIY Alphabet Puzzle

A homemade easy alphabet puzzle is great for independent learning or as a competition where the first person to complete the puzzle wins a prize. Write the alphabet on a sentence strip. Cut the sentence strip into various parts, such as abcd, efgh, ijkl, mnop, qrst, uvw, xyz. Have children put the various parts together to make the alphabet.

ABC Bingo

Letter bingo is easy to make using a plain bingo board template and easy to play over and over. Create a bingo board with capital letters and write out corresponding index cards with the matching lower case letters. Begin showing children the lower case letter cards, and children can place their bingo chips over the corresponding capital letters. The first child to get a row covered on their board is the winner.

Indoor Alphabet Walk

Kids will need to solve the mystery of where each of five letters belongs in this easy indoor ABC game. Place individual letters of the alphabet across the wall or floor. Choose five letters to take away. Give these letters to the children and ask them to place them back in their proper place.

Turn Letters Into Words

Kids who are ready to start building words from letters can use this DIY tool to practice or to compete in a spell-off.

1. Add pocket sleeve protective sheets for trading cards to a binder. You'll need at least three.
2. Create letter cards by cutting an index card in half. On one side of each half card, write one letter.
3. Place each letter card from the alphabet in the pockets.
4. Tell children to pull out letters and make a real word with them.
5. For example, using the letter a, c, and t, the children can make the word cat.
6. When they are finished, tell the children to place each letter card back into the pocket sleeves in alphabetical order.

ABC Go Fish

Give kids an indoor alphabet fishing experience like no other with this DIY alphabet game.

1. Individually laminate alphabet letters and place a small magnet on the back of each.
2. Make a fishing pole with a magnet on the end.
3. Place all the letters in a bucket.
4. Have children take turns throwing their fishing pole into the bucket and pulling out a letter.
5. Children must correctly identify the letter and/or sound the letter makes in order to stay in the game.
   1. If the letter or sound is correctly identified, the child scores a point and must keep the letter out of the bucket.
   2. If the child incorrectly identifies a letter or sound, they must put the letter back in the bucket and they do not score a point.
6. The child with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Outdoor ABC Games for Kids

When you've got nice weather and a safe, open space you can play ABC games outside in your yard, on a sports field, in the woods, at the beach, or in a park.

Alphabet Hop

Use sidewalk chalk to draw a simple alphabet grid where kids can get out some energy and recognize letters.

1. Draw a six by four grid on the driveway or parking lot surface with chalk.
2. Write one capital letter inside each square of the grid so you have 24 letters from the alphabet.
3. Have kids stand outside the grid as you call out a letter or letter sound.
4. Kids need to try to hop or take a huge step to get on that one letter. If you're playing with more than one child, call out a different letter for each.
5. Continue calling letters one at a time until you're ready to end the game.

Nature ABC Simon Says

Send kids on an outdoor scavenger hunt for natural items that begin with different letters of the alphabet in this group game. Play with all the same rules as a typical game of Simon Says. Call out a letter. For example, you might say "Simon says find something that starts with the letter N." If you said "Simon says" before your directive, kids will run around the yard or park and bring back an item that starts with the letter you called out. All kids who are correct stay in the game. If you did not say "Simon says" before your directive, kids should not move. Any kids who run off to find an item are out. The last child standing is the winner.

ABC Bullseye Toss

You'll need beanbags or small stones and some chalk to set up this active outdoor throwing game.

1. Draw three to four concentric circles around each other where the inner-most is smallest and the outer-most is biggest like a dart board or bullseye target using sidewalk chalk.
2. Write all the letters of the alphabet inside the target so they are spaced apart from each other.
3. Each player gets a beanbag or stone to toss.
4. On a turn, the player calls out a letter then tries to toss their stone as close to that letter on the target as possible.
5. Each other player throws their stone to try landing on that same letter.
6. The person whose stone is closest to the letter gets a point.
7. Play enough rounds so each player gets to call out at least two different letters.
8. The player with the most points in the end wins.

ABC Tag

Choose any type of tag as the basis for your ABC tag game. You'll need at least five people to play. Once you have chosen someone to be "It," call out any letter of the alphabet. The person who is "It" will try to tag any player who is wearing something that starts with that letter or whose name starts with that letter. For example, if you called out "B," the person who is "It" could tag Billy or someone wearing a blue shirt. When "It" tags someone he has to call out the word. The person who gets tagged is the next to be "It" and you call out a new letter.

The Ground Is Lava Alphabet Version

Kids love pretending the floor is lava, but in this variation they'll have to step on the right letters to stay safe. You can use bases or spot markers in a grassy place, or chalk on a hard surface to create your game space. These directions are for chalk on a hard surface, but you can do the same thing by writing letters on the spot markers.

1. Draw several small "islands," or circles, around the playing area.
2. Write one or two letters on each "island."
3. Color all the rest of the space, excluding the islands, red or orange to represent the lava if you want.
4. Start each child on a different letter of the alphabet.
5. Call out "All is safe." and children can run around the entire space.
6. Whenever you call out "The lava is hot!" kids have to run to the "island" that has the next letter in the alphabet as you count down from ten to one.
7. Any child on the wrong letter or in the lava after you say "one" is out of the game.
8. The last child standing wins.

Online ABC Games for Kids

Kids of all ages can play alphabet games on a computer, tablet, or phone to reinforce letter learning. Many educational websites and companies offer free games to help kids recognize and use letters.

ABC Kids Tracing & Phonics App

If you're looking for a kid-safe app for your child to play alphabet games, ABC Kids Tracing & Phonics app is a great option with four-and-a-half out of five stars in the Google Play store. There are no in-app purchases or third party ads in this full-version app. Bright animal graphics interact with kids as they play games that incorporate letter tracing, connect upper case and matching lower case letters, and match letters with pictures. Kids earn fun stickers for their achievements in each game.

Letter Dance Party

Big Bird and Snuffy's Letter Dance Party on PBS Kids games is great for learning to write capital letters. When the party starts, there are no letters, so you have to trace each one to bring it to the party. Kids simply move the mouse to trace the letter on the screen then hear the sound it makes and the name of the letter. Each letter then enters the party with a gift kids have to click on to open. The present is something that starts with the letter who brought it. This game is free and opens in its own small window making it perfect for young children because there are no distractions on the screen.

Dungeon Dash: Letters

ABCya! features dozens of free alphabet games for preschoolers all the way up through elementary school kids. In Adventure Man & Danger Dame Dungeon Dash: Letters, kids can play as either the male adventurer or female adventurer character. From there you choose between six different letter lessons like upper case only, consonants and vowels, or all categories. Kids can use their finger on a touch-screen device or use the mouse or keyboard arrow keys on a computer to play. Gameplay is pretty simple, but kids who can't read yet will need help reading which types of letters to choose on each level.

Fun With the Alphabet

You can use ABC games for kids in the classroom or at home. Children's alphabet games are entertaining ways to teach children the importance and various uses of the alphabet. Choose a variety of simple ABC games, outdoor alphabet games, and online ABC games for kids to keep them engaged and cover all the different aspects of learning letters.