Things You'll Need:
- Paper
- Creativity
- Fun
- Shapes and letters can be formed with crayons, gliter glue pens, scented markers, cherrios, shaving cream, play dough, ect...!
-
Step 1
Children need to be taught basic shapes before they are able to form letters. These are the shapes in the correct order that children should learn how to form before you begin letters- vertical lines, horizontal lines, circle, cross, square, and diagonal lines. Many children know how to form these shapes before kindergarten.
-
Step 2
After you have taught the child how to form basic shapes, move on to learning to identify uppercase and lowercase letters.
-
Step 3
Once the child can identify letters have them learn how to print their first name. Keep the first letter capitalized and then the following letters lowercased.
-
Step 4
It helps to print the letters on a piece of paper and then draw out the steps. For example for a letter "A" draw a 1 next to the first diagonal line that goes down, a 2 next to the next diagonal line that goes down, and a 3 on the line that goes across.
-
Step 5
After the child can form their name have them start to learn uppercase letters. The first set of uppercase letters children should learn have vertical and horizontal lines ( L, F, E, H, T, and I).
-
Step 6
The second set of uppercase letters children should learn are made up of curves. These include (U, C, O, Q, G, S, and J).
-
Step 7
The third set of uppercase letters include big and little curves (D, P, and B). Teach the child the difference between the big curves and the little curves to improve letter clarity.
-
Step 8
The third set of letters have diagonal lines which, are the most difficult for children to form. These include (R, K, A, V, M, N, W, X, Y, and Z).
-
Step 9
After the child can form uppercase letters move on to lowercase letters.
-
Step 10
Learning shapes and letters is fun to do in creative ways like in shaving cream, with play dough, in something edible like pudding (finger licking good!), scented markers, wiggly pens etc...
-
Step 11
The more fun you have the more fun your child will have! And the more they will learn. Be creative!
