I first learned about alphabet boxes here on the Counting Coconuts blog. The concept is that you have boxes or drawers representing different letters of the alphabet and put tiny objects that start with each letter in the correct box...
I'm constantly collecting little trinkets for the girls in the $1 section of Target, craft store clearance sections and other places, so I've built up quite a collection of miscellaneous objects. I put some alphabet boxes together for the twins a while ago when they had just turned two years old (they're now 33 months old). At first they just wanted to play with the small objects inside instead of doing anything alphabet related (I can't really blame them - using the small cup and fork to feed the small animals is a lot more fun than sounding out words), but now that they are a bit older I've been taking the alphabet boxes back out again to work on our phonemic awareness and the girls are being a lot more receptive to organizing the objects by starting sounds..
