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How to teach letters

5 replies

Bigbadgeorge · 27/04/2015 20:59

DD (22 months) is obsessed with letters at the minute. What is the best way to teach them first? I.e. 'Small' letter sounds- a, b etc or capital sounds- aay, bee, see etc?

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Ferguson · 27/04/2015 23:02

Always lower case - so 'small' letters. And the CORRECT letter sound, which I think is on Cbeebies Alphablocks, and other places.

There is also a correct sequence, so not normal 'alphabetical' order, but it starts: 's a t p i n' and that is is order taught in most schools.

But at this age, it should only be an exploratory game, and not 'teaching' as such.

A set of plastic lower case letters is good, or a letters 'sorting tray' (if they are still around; our DS had one thirty years ago!).

Help her to learn the initial sounds of words, so in due course she will start to make the connection between a sound and a word. If she has 'mark making' resources she can possibly start writing letter shapes. Or on a tray of dry sand, or flour, with a finger.

I give a couple of links:

www.phonicsinternational.com/index.html

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

Use these for ideas, and do 'real' things with her, rather than TV or computer things at first.

To prepare yourself for later, school, stages you might find this book useful, but again, don't 'teach' from it, but rather let it be something that she can experience and get used to as she matures:

An inexpensive and easy to use book, that can encourage children with reading, spelling and writing, and really help them to understand Phonics, is reviewed in the MN Book Reviews section. Just search ‘Phonics’.

odyssey2001 · 28/04/2015 07:04

Do not teach. Explore. But neither small or big letter sounds are correct. You want to say the phonemes without the schwa (ugh) sound at the end. Alphablocks is a good place to start and Google correct pronunciation of phonemes.

Bigbadgeorge · 28/04/2015 09:09

Thank you very much for your answers! Great suggestions. We are definitely doing it for fun at the minute but I want to make sure she learns the sounds in a way that doesn't cause confusion later

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MiaowTheCat · 28/04/2015 18:08

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Lovelydiscusfish · 28/04/2015 21:29

My dd loved Jolly Phonics from about 2 (google it) - very memorable, as you get an image and a song to remind you of each letter sound.
Dh also shows her something called 'letterland" on youtube, which he swears by, though I find it a bit weird. Your dd might be a bit too little for that yet, though.
Flashcards can be good! So many sets out there - I'm sure they're all much of a muchness to be honest.
Enjoy. My dd has loved letters since she was about 2, and we've really had some fun doing different games and activities with her, nothing too structured, lots of variety.

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