When teaching my preschooler to recognize words and learn to read, I came up with a fun little game I call it at home preschool word find. This word find DIY idea is so simple with big learning! Best part about it is it takes one item that costs $1 to do this!

You know I love my inexpensive preschool activities!

Dollar Store Preschool Word Find

All you need to prep for this activity is one cheap plastic fly swatter. Grab a new, clean one though. LOL!

Cut out a rectangle from the middle of the swatter part. I used scissors but you could use a craft knife as well for this. Cut carefully. 😊

Then, you are ready for the fun!

The game is to use the dollar store fly swatter to swat words around the house. This simple action gets young kids using their pre-reading and reading skills. They actively look for labels, symbols, numbers and letters.

Some places my preschooler looked for words were book covers, board game boxes, food boxes or even tags on clothes while folding laundry.

This preschool word find game is so simple. It is not required that your child know how to read. They are only finding words or letters around the house to show that they can recognize letters and words. That’s it!

I like to extend this at home word find activity for early readers by having them “find” sight words. They can swat the word and read it out loud to you as a fun reading game.

Make the DIY alphabet poster here. Use the at home word find swatter. Have your child swat the letters and read them out loud.

They can swat in order to focus on letter order or they swat randomly to test their knowledge. There are many ways to play with this Dollar Store fly swatter for preschool learning activities and pre-reading practice.

If you don’t have a fly swatter, use a little plastic magnifying glass. It works just as well.

How many other ways can you take this one item and turn it into some fun games for kids?