Ideas for Teaching the Alphabet
Learning the alphabet should be both a painless and an entertaining experience for kids. Rather than starting at the beginning of the alphabet and concentrating on methodically teaching the letters in order one at a time, try some fun activities with your child. Kids learn to recognize letters of the alphabet at various ages during their development, so it's important to stop a lesson when you can tell your child might be overloaded.
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Alphabet Hop
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Buy a piece of white or light-colored vinyl approximately 4-feet wide by 7-feet long. Using a black marker, draw lines so that the vinyl is divided into 28 squares. In 26 of these squares use colorful markers to write a letter of the alphabet. In the remaining two squares (which should be the two farthest to the right on the bottom row), write the child's first and last name. Ask the child to play "alphabet hop" by jumping onto the letter you call out. Later, as the child learns the sounds the letters make, the game could involve placing objects, such as stuffed animals and other small toys, on the correct square.
Alphabet Books
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Reading alphabet books can be fun and helpful in learning the alphabet, but you can increase their usefulness by making activities from them. If you have animal, transportation and food alphabet books, lay them out on the floor and open pages in each, for example, to the baboon, the bus and the banana. Ask the child to do the same thing with another letter of the alphabet. Also, try cutting out some construction paper alphabet letters and have kids match them to the correct page in the book.
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Molding Clay Letters
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When your child is working with molding clay, let her watch you shape the clay into various letters. Comment on the shapes as you go. For example, you can say, "Look at the T and the L. They both have sticks in the middle" or show them how Ps and Rs are similar in form. As their motor skills allow for it, help kids shape letters themselves.
Pretzel and Cookie Letters
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Eating alphabet letters makes learning fun. Make some alphabet shapes out of cookie or pretzel dough--and let your little one help bake them. For cookies, buy a set of alphabet cookie cutters and make a few cookies at a time in shapes that kids seem to be having trouble learning. You can buy pretzels shaped in rings and pretzel sticks, and using these you can form various letters by breaking and arranging the pretzels. Or make your own dough.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit alphabet charakter image by pershing from Fotolia.com
