Alphabet games

• Alphabet jewellery. Get some lettered beads and thread them onto a string. Younger kids can put them in alphabet order, match letters together, or shout out letters as they put them on. Older kids can start to form basic words.
• Scrabble hunt. Hide scrabble letters in a large bowl of rice. Kids dig out the letters and see what they recognise. Older kids can use letters to spell out basic words. This can also be done in a large bowl of shaving foam, if you don't mind the mess!
• Frozen letters. Place some foam letters in an old ice-cream tub, fill with water and freeze. Child can use a water sprayer, turkey baster or water pistol (or all three, to challenge different fine motor skills) to free the letters with warm water. For older children, have toys nearby that start with the same letter as those frozen, so as the letters are freed they can match them to the toy.
• Writing on your back. With your finger, write a letter on the child's back, and see if they can guess the letter. Then take turns writing and guessing.

Counting games

• Pirate playdough. Make a batch of playdough (you can find a no-cook recipe that kids can make here). Get beads of several colours and several sizes and bury them in the playdough. Kids dig out the gems, they can match them in colour piles or size piles, and count how many of each colour there are.
• Bubble wrap pop. Get a piece of bubble wrap (the type with the large bubbles is best). Write a number between 1 and 20, randomly, on each bubble. Shout out a number and kids have to find the number and pop the bubble as quickly as possible. Older kids can start to do basic sums by popping the answer to questions such as 1+3.
• Measuring hands. Make several handprints by drawing around a child's hand on card, cutting them out and colouring them in. Use them to measure items around the house - how many hands high is the chair? How many hands wide is the window? You can even lie on the floor and have your child measure how many hands tall you are!
• Newspaper basketball. Scrunch up balls of newspaper and divide into two piles. Use a washable texta to colour in the paper of one pile blue and the other red (or whatever your favourite colour is!). Choose a colour each and turns to throw them into a laundry basket and then count out how many you each scored.
• Lego towers. Place a row of foam floor mat numbers from 1-10 on the floor (or write 1-10 on pieces of paper). A child can build a tower next to each number consisting of the corresponding number of blocks. For older children, make sums from the numbers on the floor and make towers to answer the sums.
• Counting race. Draw a square on the path in chalk (or place a large piece of card on the floor if playing indoors). Children have a race to put a designated number of items in their square. If playing outdoors you can use pebbles or sticks; indoors it can be Lego bricks, Shopkins, beads or similar. Items should be scattered around the home and a reasonable distance away from the square. For older children, you can change the challenge to be a number of items, all starting with a particular letter. i.e. toys all beginning with 's'. Or have 3 squares per child and they need to do 3 groups of 5, for example, to introduce times tables counting.