Big & Little

What Big & Little practices

Big & Little builds letter knowledge by pairing each capital with its lowercase partner. One big letter waits beside an empty spot, and three little letters float below it.

One of the three is always a look-alike chosen to be tricky: B sits with d, P with q, M with n, T with f and S with z. Matching past those near misses is what makes lowercase letters stick, since most of the print in books is lowercase.

Who it suits

Preschool and kindergarten children, roughly ages three to six, who know some capitals (often from their own name) and are still sorting out the small letters. Letters come in teaching order, starting with s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, o and g.

How a round goes

Your child looks at the big letter and taps the little letter that goes with it. A wrong choice says its own sound and wobbles, so even a miss teaches something. The right one slides into the spot, the pair bounces, and the letter’s sound plays.

Each round is one letter, and the game works through all twenty-six before any letter repeats. A few minutes is plenty; stop while it still feels easy.

A tip for home

Turn a cereal box or a street sign into a match hunt: find a capital letter, then look for its lowercase partner somewhere else on the same box. Ten seconds of searching in real print is a lovely follow-up to the game.

Try next

• Letter Trace — once the shapes are familiar, your child forms them with a finger.
• Letter Hunt — finds a letter from its sound alone, among its look-alikes.
• Say the Sound — turns each letter into the sound it makes, said out loud.
• Which Way Round? — looks closely at lowercase letters beside their mirror images, including b and d.

More from “Letters and their sounds”

• Build the Letter — Build b, d, p and q from a stick and a ball.
• The Bed — Use the bed picture to tell b from d.

Read more

Behind in reading, or a late bloomer?: what letter knowledge usually looks like at five and six, and when a little extra help is worth it.