For the last week I’ve been letting my 2 year old play with these blocks and she’s already recognizing letters! These are from my rarely used Word Launch by LeapFrog. The sturdy plastic letter tiles that come with this game fit nicely into a recessed cardboard alphabet storage tray. The blocks only fit one way on the tray, so there’s no way the letter can be placed upside down – which has happened when I use letter magnets or flashcards. The letter blocks are lowercase, which I greatly prefer – but on the tray, the uppercase letter is printed right next to its lowercase buddy, gently teaching that by association. The vowels are all red, so anyone can see there’s something different about those letters. In fact, my 10-year-old son was watching my 2-year-old play, and he commented, “Hey, wow, I just noticed only the vowels are red!” 
You can also put the letter tiles together on a flat surface to spell words with older children, although you would really need another set to have this work well. There are 32 tiles – not enough to spell lots of big words, or work easily with more than one child. I’m already planning to check Freecycle or thrift stores for extra letter blocks, and here’s a link to some ebay listings for this product. (I found that the alphabet storage tray and letter tiles do not come separately from the game.)
Turning a rarely used item into a great teaching resource works for me! Please visit We Are THAT Family for other great Works For Me Wednesday tips.
I would love this homeschool post to be longer, but cooking, gardening, laughing at Daddy’s cartoons and other silly things take priority over blogging.
I love using stuff that better fits US! And it’s great to see my 2 year old match the letters also… I wish she knew more of the letter sounds (like her brother knew at this age) But we have plenty of time for that:)
Thanks for sharing:)
What a great tool. I am a classroom teacher so I am always on the lookout for more tools. Thanks for sharing!
We love our leapfrog letters. I have never seen the tray you have before. Ours came with a magnetic box for the fridge. We eventually progressed to the word whammer which uses the same letters and lets the child make basic simple words.
I went to the Amazon link, but did not see this alphabet tray and letters. Is it part of a set? I really like the tray. I do not, however need another electronice Leap Frog product. Ha! Please let me know what set the tray came in, or if you locate just the tray and letters alone.
Thanks,
Roan
What a great question, Roan! We don’t buy electronic games, so your question had me scrambling!
I searched a bit, and called my friend who gave this to us. You can’t get the tray and letter tiles separately. I’ve updated the post to clarify this and added some better links, including one with ebay listings. Keep an eye out at yard sales, too, or post a wanted ad on Freecycle or craigslist. Hope that helps.