Here’s a cute and seasonal alphabet match game to keep little mind’s sharp over winter break!

You’ll need 52 mitten shapes to play the game, labeled with all the letters in both upper and lower case. So yes there’s quite a bit of parental prep-work, but you can spread out the task over the course of an afternoon.

First, I printed out a mitten template (just Google and dozens will pop up), and traced a pair of mittens onto paper for every letter. You can trace onto any paper you like; colored construction paper would be pretty, although white paper would work just fine. I have a pad of patterned paper which worked great because each letter pair could have its own distinct pattern. This served as a cue for finding matches if Travis was in doubt, later on.

Label each mitten pair with the capital and lower case of each letter. Cut out.

Now it’s time to play with your mittens, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it!

You can set up a hide-and-seek around the house. If playing this version, choose just a few mitten pairs – 26 letters would require a lot of patience and good hiding spots.

Travis balked a little at the learning aspect of the game, until we found ways to make it exciting. Before bed, I showed him an upper case letter, and he used a flashlight to pinpoint the matching lower case, for example.

Even more fun, Travis loves loading up toy trucks and cars like they are dump trucks, and I encouraged him to load all the mittens – but only once he had an upper and lower case match.

He was so thrilled that he went through all 26 pairs, proudly showing me each before it was loaded up into the truck.

How else will you play with your mittens? Please share ideas in the comments!