15 Fun Letter H Activities & Crafts for Kids

The /h/ sound is little more than a breath. Like the /f/ sound from the letter F activities, it uses air and no voice. Ask your kid to hold a hand in front of their mouth and say hat. They'll feel a puff of warm air on their palm. Breathe on a cold mirror or window the same way, and it fogs up. That's the H sound, and showing it like this works better than any explanation.

Two other things to know about H. It's sometimes silent, as in hour and honest, which is why we say “an hour”. It also teams up with other letters to make new sounds: sh, ch, th and wh. Neither of these needs to be taught yet, but they explain the occasional confused look when a kid spots an H that isn't making a /h/ sound.

The fifteen activities below are sorted by setting, so you can pick one that suits the day you're having.

Stuck Indoors on a Rainy Day

1. Hat making. Roll a sheet of chart paper into a cone or fold a newspaper hat, then decorate it with drawings and stickers. Kids tend to wear these for the rest of the day, which gives you plenty of chances to say “hat” with a good puff of breath.

2. House drawing. Ask your kid to draw your home, with everyone who lives in it. Write house at the top together. If they want to add a hen or a horse in the garden, that's fine. The point is a drawing they care about.

3. Hedgehog spikes. Draw a large hedgehog body on brown paper. Your kid glues short strips of paper, or snipped pieces of straw, along its back as spikes. It's a good scissor exercise for little hands, and kids love seeing the hedgehog get spikier.

4. Hot air balloon. Colour a paper plate in bright stripes for the balloon and hang a small paper-cup basket beneath it with string. Hang the finished balloon from a doorway or ceiling fan (switched off).

Outside, or Anywhere with Space

5. Hopscotch H. Chalk a hopscotch grid on the floor of a balcony or courtyard, and write an H in a few of the squares. When your kid lands on an H, they say a word starting with /h/. Expect lots of “hop” and “hot”.

6. Horse race. Broomstick horses, or simply galloping, work for this. Race from one wall to the other while everyone calls “Hup, hup, horse!” The breathy /h/ at the start of each word is great practice when they're slightly out of breath.

7. Hula hoop. Most kids under six can't keep a hula hoop going yet, and that's fine. Lay hoops on the floor and have them hop from one hoop to the next. Count the hops out loud.

8. H hunt. Hide a few things that start with H around the room: a hat, a hairbrush, a toy horse, a handkerchief. Give your kid clues (“Something you wear on your head”) and let them search.

Quiet Time

9. Handprint hen. Paint your kid's palm and fingers, and press it onto paper with the fingers pointing sideways. The fingers become the tail feathers and the thumb the head. Add an eye, a beak and some legs with a marker once it's dry.

10. Heart H. Cut out small paper hearts in different colours and glue them along the lines of a large H drawn on paper. Starting at the top of the left line each time builds the movement for writing the letter: down, down, then across the middle.

11. Play-dough H. Roll play-dough into three “snakes”, two long and one short, and press them together to make an H. Then try a lowercase h: one tall line, with a hump coming off it. Kids sometimes mix up h and n. Pointing out that h has a tall line, and n doesn't, usually clears it up.

Letter pairs like h and n, or b and d, are among the first mix-ups teachers watch for in online phonics classes for kids.

12. Honeybee craft. Make a bee from a yellow paper circle, black paper stripes and two wings cut from tracing paper. Talk about where honey comes from while it dries.

With a Group of Kids

These work well at a birthday party or in a classroom.

13. Horse puppets. Make horses from paper bags with wool manes. Once each kid has one, the puppets put on a short show. One horse is hungry, one is happy, one is in a hurry. Kids invent the rest.

14. Pretend hair salon. Set up a “salon” with a comb, a mirror and paper dolls with wool hair for snipping with child-safe scissors. Kids take turns as the hairdresser and the customer. The conversation usually fills itself with H words: hair, hello, how much, hurry up.

15. Helicopter spin. Fold a strip of paper into a simple paper helicopter (a slit at the top makes two blades) and add a paper clip at the bottom for weight. Drop it from a height and watch it spin. Who can make theirs fall the slowest?

Two Quick Fixes

“Haitch” or “aitch”? Both are heard in India and elsewhere for the letter's name. What matters for reading is the sound, a breathy /h/. When you're teaching, use the sound more than the name.

Kids who drop the h. Some kids say “'at” for “hat”, especially if the /h/ sound is weak in the languages spoken at home. The mirror and hand tricks above help because they make the breath visible and easy to feel.

Bambinos' live classes show kids how letter sounds are made, using hands, mirrors and play, before asking them to read. Book a free trial with Bambinos to watch one.