how do children learn letters at school?

[ilovetochat]

my ss is a nursery nurse and says they sing ABC alphabet song to preschoolers to teach them the alphabet, i thought they taught them abc rather than capitals.
dd is 18 months and i don't want to teach her one way and then confuse her when she starts nursery.

Mine didn't learn until they were in Reception (ds currently in that year group)

They learn by sounding/phonetics and visuals (eg, curly c for cat)

Right, so capital letters and the ABC song may confuse then, that's what i thought. thanks

I dont think it will confuse them, as at that age the ABC song will just be another song to them, when they get to reception and start learning the phonetics they are not going to say 'oh hang on the song says A not a' iykwim

I think it's fine to see it just as a song at this stage rather than a way of teaching them the alphabet.

Once they can read and write properly they will remember and understand the song! (only going by dd, I'm not involved in education)

Im a nursery nurse and a mum of 3 and i stick to letterland,each letter is a character and it has helped all the children learn ie;a child might ask what way is b? and i say think bouncing ben and they recognise bens shape as opposed to dippy duck and it makes letters 'real' iyswim.

Hi. I have seen 2 boys through infants school and they both learnt phonics initially in lower case, but the capital version was always visually next to it. They would learn by associating an action along side the sound eg: p would be blowing out a candle with the puffing action (therefore making the 'p' sound. i was making a mouse squeak, therefore making the 'i' sound.

This way they learn an action per sound. After they have mastered the alphabet phonically, they are able to move on to putting 2 sound together ie: i t to make the word 'it' - this is called blending .... and so on. The capital version is purely visual and usually comes in when they learn to write their names or writing sentences putting them at the beginning.

Schools vary exactly how and when they introduce them, but using both won't do any damage - it will just familiarise the child. I think the abc song is pretty much redundant when they first go to school as they don't learn the name of the letter until later on if you see what I mean.

Blimey, I've really rambled on here, sorry

ok so ABC sond ok just as a song that makes sense. she has magnetic letters on the fridge but they are capitals, would little letters be better? letterland sounds good, she already knows l cos it looks like a leg if that makes sense.

ABC song fine, but not as a means of learning letters.

Having said which, the fact that DD1 knew the ABC song meant that learning to do alphabetical order was a breeze when they got to that stage. But she learned lower case letters and the sounds they make - starting with the most common letters - before the introduced the alphabest as a concept.

ok i will look for some lower case letters then, she loves reading and letters at the moment.

they don't always learn teh way we expect them to.... was most suprised teh other day when boy wrote his name! he has chosen to use Upper case, hes picked up on his initals which tend to be in upper case and picked up on words we see out and about ( again often upper case like bus stop painted on teh road ) and hes useing what he sees.

Similar to Smithagain, my understanding is that A is the name, a is the sound. So ABC song is fine.

We've avoided ABC posters and gone for Jolly Phonics versions (introduced at 2.5yrs). These sequence sounds so that the most common are introduced first.

My son has managed to learn letter names, sounds, capitals and lower case by 4.5.