Should my two year old learn 'ABC' or 'abc'?

[Heeka]

My ds (2) loves pointing out 'tuh' for Thomas when he sees it, and I'd like to show him other letters as well while he's keen.

However, I'm not sure if current teaching practice means it is better to teach him ah, buh, kuh, or Ay, Bee, See, or both. Which is used in school/pre-school, and which way makes it easiest for them to segue easily into learning to read?

We're in Wales if it makes any difference to how he'll be taught.

abc - phonetic

Phonics

Sorry pressed post a bit sooner than I meant . Not normally quite that abrupt .

try not to say the 'uh'

I asked my ds's nursery teacher this very question because he has suddenly become interested in letters.

She said that we should tell him A makes a, (Ay makes ah), B makes b (Bee makes buh) etc etc.

We have been doing this for less than a week and he seems to have got the hang of it already.

ah, bur, kuh and lower case letter recognition first. The capitals seem to come pretty quickly following that, but obviously, you're in no rush!

That makes sense mawbroon.

Cyb - do you mean, for example, a T being 'tuh' but in a short, clipped kind of way?

A makes a, etc makes sense - so are you showing him both sets of alphabets at the same time in order to do this? Only being 2, I hadn't really envisaged anything so formal, more just pointing out letters as and when.

Yep, 'T' is very clipped, as is P . B and D harder not to add the 'uh' etc. M is MMM not Muh

The kids at nursery would normally recognise capital letters first, they will know that Ah is for Arianne and Buh is for Becca. They tend to see shops, names and road signs so a lot of these will have capital letters at the start. You could do big A and little a but I wouldn't do the names of the letters just now. DS is 5 and is only just learning the alphabet and names of the letters at school. He has known his phonic sounds since he was about 2 and can read and write really well.

He does have an alphabet in his Thomas book which he is currently obsessed with and it does show both upper and lower case letters which makes it easier.

But, if we just see letters elsewhere, then I will say "A makes a" if it's a capital letter and just the sound "a" if it's a lower case one.

DS is 4 btw. It's only recently that he's shown an interest in letters, having been obsessed with numbers since before he could talk!!!

We did as mawbroon - taught dd that letters have a name and a sound. After all - they do! She also had a couple of toys with the names and alphabet song that she was very fond of - so couldn't avoid the names without throwing those out. She was 2 when she went through that phase too - and they did kind of jumble up for a while (lower and upper case, names and sounds) but it was all sorted by 4.

mawbroon Sun 14-Feb-10 21:58:24
He does have an alphabet in his Thomas book which he is currently obsessed with and it does show both upper and lower case letters which makes it easier.

But, if we just see letters elsewhere, then I will say "A makes a" if it's a capital letter and just the sound "a" if it's a lower case one.

Please don't a capital A still represents the short vowel sound not the letter name. Capital letters and lower case have both names and associated sounds and children shouldn't be led to believe that one represents the names and the other the sounds.

I just taught the phonic sounds including vowel sounds, sounds like the two types of oo, and sounds like th. I didn't teach the names because I didn't see how 'doubleyou' helps with reading. The school taught letter names by singing the alphabet song.

If you want to hear the correct sounds then the Jolly Phonics CD is good. It gives yout he correct sound for each letter with a short song to help remember it. i bought it for my 4 year old but by default 2 year old is also beginning to learn them as we often have it on in the car.

the BBC fun with phonics is excellent - Jolly phonics based but a bit more modern. worked for us!

Phonic and lower-case.

Stop! He is not ready for that yet, let him enjoy his early years ...