Searching for an engaging, purposeful and low-prep play tray that will develop your students’ initial letter and sound recognition skills? Our Teaching With Play Trays resource is just what you need to get started!

Check out this video below to see this resource in action.

Students will love identifying the initial sounds in words as they hunt for buried treasure! The action of ‘digging’ for buried treasure is a stimulating sensory experience that will help to develop your students’ fine motor skills, including their hand-eye coordination, strength, control and spatial awareness. Simply print the included task cards and playing cards on white card and cut them out. The playing cards can be buried under yellow sand, dyed rice or shredded paper in your play tray or tuff tray, ready to be dug up by your little pirates! The playing cards can be ‘dug up’ with small shovels or a suitable alternative, such as spoons. Small toy shovels can often be found in shops, such as Kmart and Target.

This versatile resource includes:

1. Detailed instructions (including a list of equipment, instructions for use, optional suggestions, question prompts and an example set up of the play tray).
2. 26 pirate letter task cards.
3. Editable blank pirate letter task cards (feel free to make these uppercase or lowercase letters only).
4. 104 treasure playing cards (we have included 4 words to match each sound).
5. Colourful signs for you to display alongside your play tray (includes a version with a learning intention).
6. Editable signs (for you to add your learning intention or instructions to).

To set up your play tray or tuff tray, simply add yellow sand, dyed rice or shredded paper and either bury the treasure playing cards completely, or have them poking out of the ‘sand’. Scatter plastic gems, jewels and coins in the play tray and ensure each student has access to a small shovel or spoon for ’digging’ and a bowl for collecting their treasure playing cards. Adding other themed elements, such as rocks and toy animals will provide challenging obstacles and allowing students to accessorise with pirate hats, eye patches and telescopes is sure to add to the fun!

The aim of the task is for students to identify which sound the letter on their task card makes and locate 4 matching treasure playing cards in the ‘sand’. Once students have found all 4 cards, they can practise saying the sound and the words to an adult or partner. We recommend asking the students meaningful questions throughout the activity to determine their understanding.

To extend your students, ask them to name other words that begin with their focus sound. Pretend to ‘find’ a matching card that is incorrect and have the student explain why it does not match. Older students could be challenged to hunt for a random collection of treasure playing cards and put them in alphabetical order or use them to write a sentence. Alternatively, they could identify whether the collected words are nouns, verbs, adverbs or adjectives. The possibilities are endless with this versatile resource!

We recommend printing all resources on thick card for longevity. As the treasure playing cards are designed to be printed back-to-back, please select flip on the short edge when printing.

It's time to hunt for buried treasure!

Available in our basic fun font and all Australian state fonts.