15 Fun Letter E Activities & Crafts for Kids

E is a vowel, and that makes it harder to teach than most of the letters before it. B, C and D each make one main sound at the start of a word. E makes several. Listen to the first sound in each of these:

• egg, elephant, envelope: The short e, like the sound in “bed”

• eagle, even: The long e, which sounds like the letter's name

• earth, eraser, eye: Different sounds again

Most phonics programmes teach the short e first because it's the sound kids need for simple words like pet, hen and red. So the activities below stick with short-e words wherever a word is involved. If an activity uses “eagle” or “Earth” to teach the E sound, a beginner can come away confused about which sound E makes.

Crafts

1. Egg carton elephant

Cut a single cup from an egg carton for the head, paint it grey, and glue on big paper ears and a rolled-paper trunk. While your kid paints, say “elephant” slowly and let them hear the e at the start.

If your kid wants more E creatures, this list of animals that start with E has ten. Some, like the eagle and the emu, use the long sound, so save those for later.

The craft takes about twenty minutes and can sit on a shelf afterwards as a reminder.

2. Painted eggs

Hard-boil a few eggs, let them cool and give your kid paints or felt pens. Some kids will draw faces, while others will cover the whole egg in one colour. Both are fine.

Holding a round, slightly slippery egg while painting is surprisingly good practice for small fingers.

3. Elephant mask

Paint a paper plate grey, cut two eye holes, and staple on paper ears. A toilet-roll tube makes a trunk.

Kids usually want to wear it straight away, so let them walk around as an elephant before asking them anything about letters.

4. Envelope art

Old envelopes from the post work well. Let your kid decorate a few with stickers, stamps or drawings. Then put a small drawing inside each one and have them deliver the “mail” to people in the house.

5. E collage

Draw a big capital E on a sheet of paper. Cut pictures of short-e things from old magazines or catalogues, such as eggs, an elephant, envelopes or a red pen, and glue them inside the outline.

Games

6. Sound sorting

Collect picture cards or small objects. Include a few that start with short e (egg, elephant, envelope) and a few that don't (apple, ball, sun).

Your kid sorts them into two piles. Once that's easy, sneak in “eagle” and see whether they notice it sounds different. If they do, they're really listening.

7. Envelope matching

Write a capital E on some envelopes and a lowercase e on others. Write the same letters on small cards. Your kid posts each card into the matching envelope.

Mix in a few other letters, like F and L, which look similar to E, to make it harder.

8. Elephant walk

Kids swing one arm in front of their face like a trunk and stomp across the room. Each time you call out a word starting with short e, they trumpet. Any other word, they stop.

It gets the wiggles out and checks their listening at the same time.

9. Feelings plate

Draw a happy face, a sad face, an angry face and an excited face around the edge of a paper plate. Fix a cardboard arrow in the middle with a split pin.

Your kid spins the arrow and acts out the face it lands on. This one is mostly about naming feelings, which is a useful skill on its own, and “excited” is a nice E word to add.

10. Exercise break

Call out simple moves: ten jumps, touch your toes, stretch tall. Count them out loud together.

It doesn't teach the letter directly, but a short movement break makes the sitting-down activities on this list easier to finish.

Writing the letter

11. Eraser stamping

The end of a new pencil eraser makes a neat round stamp. Draw a large E in pencil and have your kid stamp dots along the lines with paint or an ink pad.

Start with the tall line on the left, then the three short lines. Doing it in that order builds the movement they'll use to write E.

12. Sensory tray

Hide a few short-e objects in a tray of rice or lentils: a plastic egg, a toy elephant, a folded envelope.

Your kid digs them out with their fingers and names each one. Then smooth the rice and let them write E in it with a finger.

13. Lowercase e practice

The lowercase e trips kids up because it starts in the middle, not at the top.

Draw a short line across the middle first, then curve up, over and around. Practising the movement big, in the air with a whole arm, before trying it on paper makes it easier.

For older preschoolers

14. Egg drop

For five- and six-year-olds, this simple science challenge works well: wrap a raw egg in whatever you can find (cloth, paper, a box, cotton wool) and drop it from a safe height to see if it survives.

Do this outdoors, with an adult doing the dropping. It's more of a science activity than a letter one, but kids remember “egg” for a long time afterwards.

If your kid loves this kind of guess-and-test challenge, Bambinos also runs a live science course for curious kids aged six and up.

15. Short-e word family

When the short e sound feels familiar, show them how it sits in the middle of small words too: hen, pen, ten, then red, bed, fed.

Write each one on a card and read them together. This is the point where learning the letter turns into learning to read.

A note on the confusing words

There's nothing wrong with eagles or the Earth. They just don't help when a kid is still learning which sound E makes.

Bring them in later, once short e is secure, as interesting exceptions: “E can make another sound too. Listen: eagle.”

Kids who already know one rule well are usually curious about the exceptions.

Bambinos' live phonics classes teach vowels in a similar order, starting with the short sounds and moving on to the trickier ones. You can pick a trial class at no charge.