Cardboard Post Office and Sound Drop
Your child holds a picture card, says the sound its word starts with, and posts it through the slot marked with that letter.
- Age
- 3 to 5, best at 3
- Setup
- 15 min, once
- Play
- 10 to 20 min
- Materials
- Household only
- Mess
- None
- You
- Play along
Activity KG-A054
What you need
The box gets made once and the cards get replaced every few weeks, which is what keeps it alive. Everything here is a shoebox, a marker and the side of a cereal packet.
- A shoebox with a lid that lifts offx1 Or: an ice cream tub. Or a cereal box taped shut along the top. The lid has to come off so the cards can be tipped out and looked through together. A box that has to be upended sends half the cards under the sofa, and the looking-through at the end is where most of the learning lands.
- Cereal box card for the picture cards12 to 20 cards, 7 by 10 cm Or: cut-up postcards. Or pictures cut from a supermarket leaflet and glued on. At 7 by 10 cm a three year old can hold the card in one hand and aim it with the other. Paper cards bend on the way in and jam in the slot, and a jammed card stops the run.
- Masking tape and a markerx1 each The letters go on tape above the slots, not on the box. Four new sounds next month then costs ten seconds instead of a new box.
- A craft knife or a sharp pair of scissorsx1 Slots want a clean cut, 8 cm long and 8 mm tall. A torn slot catches the card halfway, and the whole appeal of posting is that the card goes and does not come back.
- A supermarket leaflet or cataloguex1 Or: draw the pictures yourself in biro. Stick figures are fine and often better. A leaflet gives twenty clear photographs of ordinary objects in two minutes, which takes the quality of your drawing out of the question entirely.
How to set it up
- Cut four slots across the lid, each 8 cm long and 8 mm tall, spaced about 4 cm apart.5 min
- Write one letter on a strip of masking tape and stick it above each slot.2 min
- Make twelve picture cards, three for each letter, drawn or cut from the leaflet.8 min
- Post one card yourself, saying the sound slowly as it goes in, and hand her the next one.30 sec
What to say and what to do
Say
Mmmmoon. Which one says mmm?
Post it.
- Say the sound the letter makes, not the name of the letter. Em and mmm are two different jobs and only one of them is any use here.
Do
- Post two cards yourself first, saying the sound slowly as the card goes in, and then stop narrating. The slow sound is the whole of the teaching.
- Sit down and take turns with your own card. At three this is a game played with somebody, and it goes flat the moment it becomes a test.
- Change the pictures far more often than the letters. The same four sounds with twelve new cards is a brand new activity, and it costs five minutes.
Let be
- A card posted into the wrong slot and left there. Tipping the box out at the end and looking through the pile together does more than a correction in the moment.
- The same card posted eleven times. The sound gets said eleven times too.
- The sorting quietly stopping while the posting carries on. The hand found this game before the ear did, and the ear catches up on its own.
What it looks like when it is working
- She says the sound out loud before the card goes in, without anyone asking her to.
- A card gets held over one slot, then moved across to another, then dropped.
- He starts finding things around the room that begin with the same sound, unprompted.
- The wrong card gets spotted at the end, by him, when the box is emptied out.
What to expect at each age
At three
Posts everything with enthusiasm and gets the first sound right more often than not when two slots are open. Four slots at once is usually a lot at this age, and the sorting drifts.
Hearing the last sound in a word, and then the middle one, arrives later. First sounds come first, and they come on their own for quite a while.
Lasts 10 to 15 minutes
At four
Works four slots, sorts a stack of twelve with one or two in the wrong place, and starts naming the letters as well as sounding them. Wants to make his own cards.
Blending the sounds together into a whole word is the next thing, and it usually shows up in his own speech before it shows up here.
Lasts 15 to 20 minutes
At five
Sorts by sound without hesitating, writes the letters onto fresh tape herself, and asks for harder ones. Invents rules: the same sound at the end, or two letters on one slot.
This is the point where the box becomes a spelling game rather than a sorting one, and three-letter words start going in whole.
Lasts 20 minutes or more
When it goes sideways
Each of these is the box telling you something about the level it is set at, and each of them moves in one step.
He posts everything into the same slot
The posting is the interesting part and the sound is a rule sitting on top of it. At three that order is completely normal.
Let him post the whole stack freely once, with no rule at all, then tape over two slots and play with two sounds that are nothing like each other, such as mmm and sss.
She knows the letters but posts them wrong
She has the letter names, which are a different piece of knowledge from the sounds. Knowing that a letter is called aitch gives you nothing at all when you meet the word hat.
Drop the names entirely for a few weeks and say only the sound. If a name slips out, follow it straight away with the sound, twice.
The card will not go in
The slot is too short or too tight, and card is stiffer than paper.
Lengthen each slot to a full centimetre longer than the card is wide, and open it to about a centimetre tall. Run a strip of tape along the cut edge so it stays smooth.
It is over after six cards
Twelve cards is twelve decisions, and at three that is a genuinely full activity rather than a short one.
Keep the run short and come back tomorrow with different pictures. Photographs of his own things, his shoes, his cup, his grandmother, hold attention far longer than drawings of a moon.
Making it harder
Four rungs on the same box. Only the tape and the cards change, and the sounds move from obvious to close together.
Two slots, two far-apart sounds
- Ready when
- This is where everybody starts.
- What changes
- Two slots open, mmm and sss, six cards.
- What is new
- Noticing that a word has a beginning at all, which is the part adults forget is a discovery.
Four slots
- Ready when
- She sorts six cards into two slots without hesitating.
- What changes
- Four letters, twelve cards, three per sound.
- What is new
- Holding four possibilities in mind while a word is said, rather than choosing between two.
Sounds that are close together
- Ready when
- He sorts twelve cards into four slots with one mistake or none.
- What changes
- Pairs that sit near each other in the mouth: b and p, d and t, m and n.
- What is new
- Listening properly rather than guessing from the shape of the word.
Last sounds, then whole words
- Ready when
- She is writing some of the letters herself and asking for harder ones.
- What changes
- Same box, new instruction: post by the sound the word ends with. Then swap the pictures for written words.
- What is new
- Taking a word apart at both ends, which is the thing that actually carries into reading.
Stop while there are still cards in the stack rather than at the bottom of it. A box left on the shelf with six cards waiting beside it gets picked up on its own far more often than an empty one.
How to keep it safe
One cutting job, and it belongs to you.
- You cut the slots. A craft knife through a shoebox lid is quick, and it is the only part of this that wants adult hands.
- Run masking tape along the cut edge of each slot. Cardboard cuts leave a rough edge that catches a finger going in after a card.
- Keep the cards at 7 by 10 cm or larger, and sit at the table for this one if there is a younger child in the house who still posts things into her mouth.
Why this helps
What is being practised here is hearing the first sound of a spoken word as a separate thing from the word. That sounds trivial and it is not: a three year old hears moon as one piece of sound, and pulling the mmm off the front of it is a genuine act of analysis. Everything in early reading stands on it, and it is an ear skill long before it is a paper one.
The posting is what makes it stick at this age. There is a moment where the card hovers over one slot and the decision happens, and then the card drops and the answer is final and silent. The box does not buzz, does not light up and does not tell anybody they were wrong, so the child is not playing against a machine. The mistake stays hidden inside the box until it is tipped out, which turns the review into two people looking at a pile together rather than a correction landing mid-move.
Skill practised: hearing the first sound in a spoken word and matching it to a letter
This is not reading lessons. A three year old posts cards because the slot swallows them, and the sounds come along for the ride.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. The thing worth watching for on this one is the hover, the second where the card is held over one slot and then moved to another.
Opens the profile, not a message. No newsletter, and nothing on this page is held back for followers.
Questions parents ask
We speak Armenian and Russian at home. Does this still work?
It works in whichever language the child speaks most, and that is the one to run it in. Pick four consonants whose sound stays the same at the start of every word: in Armenian, Մ, Ս, Կ and Բ; in Russian, М, С, Б and К. Skip the vowels and skip any letter whose sound shifts depending on what follows it. Run one language per sitting rather than mixing two boxes, because the alphabet changes but the listening does not, and the listening is what transfers.
She already knows all her letter names. Is this too easy?
Letter names and letter sounds are separate knowledge, and the names are the less useful half. A child who can recite the alphabet perfectly often cannot tell you what sound starts the word sock. Run the box with sounds only and you will see quickly which one she has. If she has both, move to the sounds that sit close together, b against p and d against t.
How many slots should I open at the start?
Two, and make them as different as you can. Mmm and sss are made in completely different places in the mouth, so a three year old can separate them by feel as well as by ear. Four slots is the second week, not the first.
Do I have to draw the pictures?
A supermarket leaflet solves this in two minutes and gives you twenty clear photographs of ordinary objects. Cut them out, glue them onto cereal box card, done. Photographs of the child's own things work better still, because a picture of his own shoes is worth about three drawings of a boat.