best way to practice the alphabet

Discussion in 'General' started by ljcrochet, Jul 30, 2008.

  1. ljcrochet

    ljcrochet Well-Known Member TS Moderator

    I want to work on the abc with my girls. Give me pointers. This morning we were playing tinkertoys and I had made a triangle, Sydney changed it to the letter N and said I made a letter.
     
  2. JDMummy

    JDMummy Well-Known Member

    Start with the song. They can memorize this pretty quickly. Then you can make some flashcards with A on one side and an apple picture on the next. You can also use Starfall.com. They can click on the letters and it brings them to an item that begins with that letter. You can do it with them. :)
     
  3. jenn-

    jenn- Well-Known Member

    What do you want them to learn about the alphabet right now? Do you want them to learn how to form the letters? Know their sounds? Just be able to identify them? All the above? Honestly the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD taught my boys their ABC's and most of the sounds. We also have the Leapfrog letters for the fridge they use to drive us nuts (ok only Brandon is still at the driven them nuts phase).
     
  4. rheamay

    rheamay Well-Known Member

    The twins have learned most of their alphabet by sight just by writing on their magnadoodles. :) They love them. They wanted me to draw pictures over and over and then for variety I started writing letters. Pretty soon, they were recognizing the letters. They don't quite have the motor skills to write them...although they have done "Y" and "H" pretty well. But they know them now by sight. They don't even know the alphabet song yet...maybe I should teach them that. ;)
     
  5. twoin2005

    twoin2005 Well-Known Member

    At this age, novelty works wonders. Here are a few off the top of my head.

    Writing/Forming letters:
    sidewalk chalk
    stick and sand
    finger and paint
    finger and salt/sand/shaving cream on a cookie sheet
    popsicle sticks
    toothpick and playdough
    tactile finger tracing cards (found at teacher supply stores)
    you write the letter and trace with glue; they glue beads, cheerios, noodles, etc. on the letter

    Identification:
    Hide fridge magnet ABCs in sand and have a hunt
    ABC cookies, soup, cereal
    magazine hunts (i.e., find a C)
    flashcards
    ABC fridge magnets on a cookie sheet
    Bingo
    Memory (Concentration)

    For sounds, just adapt the above games to sounds instead of letter names.
     
  6. slr814

    slr814 Well-Known Member

    When I taught my DD the alphabet, we made an "Alphabet Book" We did one letter a day, and started out by cutting out pictures in magazines that started with the letter of the day. This taught what sound the letter made. Then she would write the letter. I would write out a big upper and lower case, and she would either copy, or if it was a hard letter, trace first, until she wrote a good upper and lower case. Sometimes this would take several pages. Then we would glue the pictures we had cut out out, and write the letters on the page. That would then be our page of the day. Before we did this, she could only recognize a few letters of the alphabet, write only the letters in her name, and did not know the sounds that any of the letters made. Afterwards, she could recognize and write every letter of the alphabet, and knew all the basic sounds. She loved making the book, and was so proud when it was finished.
     
  7. marcy874

    marcy874 Well-Known Member

    Mine learned to recognize the letters with the Leapfrog fridge magnets. When I realized they actually knew some of them by recognition, we just started asking/telling them the rest of the letters until they knew them all. They also have an ABC puzzle that says the letter when you put it in the right spot. Madison can sing the ABC song, that too, was just from me singing it to them all the time, then one day she suprised me by singing it all by herself. Since they know the letters, I'll probably start working with them on the sounds the letters make and what letter a word starts with next. I've been pretty lucky in that mine are like little sponges and have been learning things without me 'formally' sitting down and teaching them. Its just been a part of our playtime. Lets just hope it continues this way. The "Alphabet Book" sounds like a great idea for them for this winter.
     
  8. NINI H

    NINI H Well-Known Member

    I second the Leapfrog videos!!! DS#2 learned very quickly with these.
     
  9. Babies4Susan

    Babies4Susan Well-Known Member

    We have the Leapfrog Letter magnet thing for the fridge. And I think that worked well, they definitely learned to sing the ABC's with that. I recently bought the Leapfrog letter DVD, and now they are doing really well at recognizing letter and putting together that certain words start with those letters. We can sit and say show me D for daddy, M for mommy, L for Lily, G for Gracie, etc. and they pick those letters out. They also recognize their names written out. We also have an Elmo car shaped toy that has all the letters on it and they can do various games with it. It's an annoying toy, but they have started to recognize what letters words start with playing with it.

    But as far as writing letters, I'm pretty sure they aren't ready for that.
     
  10. PJ

    PJ Well-Known Member

    OK, I am not a homeschooler but my daughter learned all her letters in the bathtub. We have some Dora foam letters that stick on the tub - every night she has a bath we work on her letters and she LOVES it. She can name every letter (upper case) and can also tell me the sounds. She knows about 75% of her lower case letters but I can't seem to find any foam letters in lower case. We have even started with some reading/spelling! It's amazing how quickly she picked it up.

    There is also a great website www.starfall.com. We will play on there while her brothers are napping and it's really quite good.
     
  11. Susanna+3

    Susanna+3 Well-Known Member

    Emma learned just by me reading her lots of alphabet books. The twins are so 'behind' as far as this goes. Emma was reading by age 3.5...knew all her letters by 20 months! (I kid you not. She's 5 and reads at the level 3 readers!) The twins each know maybe 10 letters..... I waffle between scolding myself with 'bad mommy!' and thinking it's no big deal... after all they really don't need to know the actual letter names in order to decode for reading... the letter sounds are actually much more important! But I'm hoping to get the ball rolling a bit more with this stuff this year. Judah's been too busy learning the names of every type of construction vehicle known to man, and Avielle's been too busy learning how to be a princess to bother with such trivial stuff as the alphabet. LOL.
     
  12. Aurie

    Aurie Well-Known Member

    We were Leapfroggers as well. My dd learned most everything letter/numbers from these DVDs, the fridge magnets, etc.
     
  13. LaRae81

    LaRae81 Well-Known Member

    For my little ones Word World and Super Why made the difference!
     
Loading...
Similar Threads Forum Date
Best Practices -- 5-6 year old behaviour Childhood and Beyond (4+) Oct 25, 2011
Best 6.7 Powerstroke Delete Kit Recommendations General Monday at 5:34 PM
Explore the Best NZ Online Casino Sites to Play Pokies General Mar 18, 2024
What is the best way to prepare for travel? General Mar 15, 2024
The best job for girl in Paris General Feb 19, 2024

Share This Page