Encourage students to use their imagination and have fun inventing things while teaching the letter I. Hold a contest during the letter I lessons to see who can invent the greatest game or the most unique story. The students who use the most I words in their stories and games can win a prize.
Alphabet Book for Students
Have students add a page to their alphabet book for the letter I. Encourage students to make the letter I out of something that starts with the letter I. For example, an I shaped igloo or Ice cube. Ask students to share their creative ideas with the entire class. Tell students that they are using their imagination to create these fancy letters and that starts with I too!
Snacks that Teach the Letter I
If it happened to snow before teaching this letter, consider making homemade snow ice cream. In order to do this, you need to have two large bowls, sugar, vanilla, milk and a spoon. Go outside and collect a large amount of clean snow. You will need to do this several times before each child has a small amount of ice cream, if you have a large class.
Mix a little milk in to make the snow the right consistency for ice cream. Add a small amount of vanilla (a teaspoon will be more than enough) and sugar to taste. If you add more snow, it will thicken the ice cream. Dish into bowls and enjoy.
Activities that Teach the Letter I
Purchase sugar cubes to make igloos. Read An Igloo on the Lake: A Woodland Fantasy for Those Who Love Secrets of the Forests by Marian Moore Lewis [Trafford Publishing 2006] and look carefully at the pictures of the igloos. Depending on the number of sugar cubes you were able to acquire, you may need to team your students up. With white glue, have students build an igloo on a piece of cardboard. As a final touch, they can use a paint brush and paint to add the letter I to the side of the igloo.
Another great book you can read is Imagine, by Alison Lester [Houghton Mifflin/Walter Lorraine Books, 1993]. Encourage students to use their imaginations while reading this book, and have them participate in some more imaginary fun after having read the book. See how creative your students can be in coming up with an imaginary world.
Remember to spend time teaching students how to write the upper and lower case letter I as well. Sand plates are a great way to reinforce both the proper way to form the letters as well as the proper way to say both the long and short I sound.
Learn how to teach the other letters of the alphabet.
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