Manipulatives give children the opportunity to interact with the alphabet through hands-on play.

They are able to feel the shape of the objects and arrange multiple items to form letters and words.

They can see the curves and the lines that come together to form each letter, and some manipulatives even allow children to explore letter formation and tracing.

For this activity, we used manipulatives to spell the word CACTUS.

Students used block letters to accomplish this.

They did so by sounding out each letter, matching it to the correct letter shape, and combining sounds to create a word!