Do children learn lower case first, or small & capital together? And what sounds?

[LadyOfWaffle]

Just doing bits and bobs with DS but want to make sure I am on the right track and not going to confuse him - I have been sticking to lower case letters but been calling them as you would say the alphabet, rather than the sound of them (does that make sense?) Have forgotten how they learn it, I have memories of doing the sounds...

Feeling in current primary setting is that it's more worthwhile to do lower case and joined up as soon as possible, although invariably it's easier for the child to do capitals.

Try jolly phonics for sound stuff.

If you're learning the letters in isolation, then it's fine to do ay bee see dee eff etc. Within a word though, you're better off with the sounds a/b/k/d/eh/

sounds - yr R teachers are keeling over as you type.
don't worry, i taught all mine proper letter names and capitals and thought i was going to burn in hell at the 'what we teach your children in yr R' meeting.

in theory, lower case, and the sound is the 'right' way...

but as mine could all read before school i felt somewhat vindicated.

have fun!

I followed my mother and taught them "a says A, b says B", etc (ie the name of the letter and the sound at the same time). Either my children are very bright or it's not that confusing (or possibly even both)!

DD learnt lower case first, and then upper case - with exception of M, O and K as they are in her name.

But you need to be teaching letter sounds, rather than names first.

Oh, ok - I'll stick with teaching him mainly his letters as lower case (don't want to confuse him yet) and using their sounds... I think he might get confused with a is for Ah type thing ATM, he's only 2.3 so it's really early stages. Cute though because he is obsessed with the letter h

I wanted to entertain dd so i could bf ds when he was born so she has a little magnetic easel with magnetic letters (i think elc) she absolutely adores it, i kind of mish mash through ay, bee, cee etc. but do say words they begin and the sounds occassionally. We use lower case except A and 'baby' a as both are in her name.

She is also strarting to get keen on the alphabet song, she sing it as a,b,c,d...l,m,n,o...x,y,z ! I think the song is good as dd has miracolously learnt to count to ten as we walk down the stairs, so repetition makes stuff stick somehow.

oh and she will tell you it is double x as well as double u(w)

I don't see how you can avoid teaching both lower and upper case since they see both all the time. Wat do you do when they point to the upper case letters, lie?

I've done the same as asteamedpoater - no problems as far as I can see.

Well no, but what I meant was when you are doodling/sticking foam letters on bath tiles etc. just things like that, I didn't mean avoid capitals completely.

The letters are learnt in an illogical order. I think the first group is a,s,d,m,p,l,t or something. The theory is that you can make lots of three letter words from these letters.

I wouldn't worry too much about confusing a 2.3 year old - my children were interested in letters from much younger than that, and every time they pointed at a letter, I'd say "that's an a and a says AH", or whatever, just as I'd say "that's a ball" or "that's a car". I'd quite often also add something else, like "apple begins with an a - a says AH for apple...", or even come up with a whole list of words beginning with that letter. I favoured talking about the name of the letter and the sound at the same time because most children learn the alphabet song at pre-school, regardless of whether they recognise any of their letters, so I thought it would help that they knew the names of the letters as well as their sounds, so that they could connect the song to the symbols.

My children were obsessed with jigsaws and peg puzzles, and we were given alphabet puzzles of both varieties, hence the endless opportunities to talk about letters from a very early age... It certainly worked with mine - they know their alphabet forwards and backwards and the eldest rather anally knows what number a letter of the alphabet is (eg u is the 21st letter in the alphabet...).

As for whether they learnt lower case or capitals first, I think they probably learnt their lower case letters first, because the peg puzzle was in lower case... I also think it's probably more useful, because you see more letters in lower case day-to-day. The jigsaw had capital letter and lower case next to each other, so I'd point out that both letters were actually the same. (Which all makes it sound very complicated, but all I can say is that it didn't confuse them at all, and for them it was all just part of Mummy's usual witterings about the world, rather than a formal learning process, so gradually it sank in, without anyone noticing when or exactly how).

ps I also recommend the Jolly Phonics books - but particularly Finger Phonics, which teaches the letter and letter-combination sounds but also has indented letter shapes for your child to run its finger over, helping them learn how to form the lower case letters properly in preparation for (joined-up) writing. My eldest son, despite being left-handed and not greatly talented with his motor skills, loved tracing round these letters when he was younger and has always been able to write all his letters correctly - he's never reversed any or formed them in an unusual way (and is only 4.3 years old). Admittedly, he's always had an unusually intense interest in academic things, so might have been able to do this without it, but nevertheless...