Alphabet Games for Toddlers

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Laura, and today, I'm going to give you some ideas for playing alphabet games with toddlers. Toddlers are, of course, in the very early stages of word recognition and development, so you want to do things that are very easily recognizable with them and fun. The first thing that you can do is obviously sing the alphabet song with them. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. Now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me? Isn't that a great song? And that's the song that we all know because we were all a part of it when we were younger. So if you sing the alphabet song with your toddler, you're going to get immediate results because it's a very easy melody. It's also the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star melody. Twinkle, twinkle little star. You know, so it's something that everybody will know if they're learning the English alphabet. The next thing that you could do is you can actually take objects around your house and you can say to your toddler -- and this is what my mom did with me. This is a sheep, so you're going to ask your toddler, "What is this?" And they're going to say, "It's a sheep." And then you're going to ask them, "What does...what letter does sheep start with?" Okay. And if you can get to this point, it's pretty good for a toddler. Just for them to recognize that it's a sheep is a good thing. But you can say, "Sheep starts with the letter S." And if they can make the letter S, you know, that's probably a pretty good judge of the game right there. You could do it with anything in your house -- you know, flower, sheep, pen, desk -- and anything that they can pick up and look at and have in their hands. And then finally, what you can do is you can have handy some books that are actually alphabets that are books. I have an example here from an old book from the 1800s that goes through the ABCs. The first letter is A. A for apple pie. And throughout the whole book, this...the children and the apple pie interact together in different ways that correspond with the letter. So A goes with apple. You know, B goes with bat. C goes with cat, and stuff like that. So yeah, so get down there and really start playing with your kids because even though you don't think they can understand exactly what you're saying, when they see the sheep, they're going to know to say sheep, and really, that's all there is to it, isn't there? This is a sheep. Why is it a sheep? Because we say it is. So have fun playing with your toddler."