teaching the alphabet

[My2kidsmum]

Hi

I'm trying very hard to teach my ds letters and he's finally getting an interest at last! However, I am teaching him phonetically (sp!). Is this correct or should I be teaching him the traditional abc?

Any help appreciated please and hope that makes sense!

Thanks

Most kids learn phonetically I think. I taught ds when he was 2 with one of those abc jigsaw puzzles. Later we drew A4 sized letters and coloured them in and cut them out then stuck them in a long line around his room like a mural. As we were colouring we would say all the things that started with that letter (that was when he was 3 and a half). So J was jug letter and H was hat letter etc. I also had the letterland book which he enjoyed because of the story line to each letter.

dd1 (3.10) is currently learning the traditional abc - apparently my teacher friend says they need to know this first before you introduce the phonics and start reading. nursery is doing this so am following their lead.

Hummm, I thought the lastest was to concentrate on phonics/phonic pronouniations rather than traditional alphabet (ie a is ah not ai, iykwim?!)

Alphabet not as important as phonics definitely.

btw, DS learnt his alphabet stupidly early (?by just over 2, I think) from an alphabet jigsaw that he loved. We do lots of general phonics stuff as games - eg thinking of things that start with the same letter, making up nonsense rhymes etc - silly billy willy jilly is ds's current favourite . And, the obvious one, lots of reading. DS (3 next week!) has made the link between words on paper and sounds, can find a word on page by looking for a word that starts with the right sound (as long as we do easy ones, obviously). We are also just starting to do word rhythms ( eg cat is one beat, donkey is two) Think all of this sort of stuff is called pre-literacy (ie learning about sounds rather than reading/letters per se)

(Can you tell my mum was a recption teacher?!)

admylin - I'd second the Letterland books, dd2 loves the stories and learnt hrt letters this way.

I believe letterland is considered outdated now, Jolly Phonics more widely used by schools and very effective. You can get lots of Jolly Phonics stuff from the ELC.

we did do phonics first, but with nursery doing otherwise - got a bit confused meself. but at the end of the day dd1 is recognising her letters and tells me the sound, so can;t be too worried that its all wrong or right.

think jolly phonics is widely used - but letterland ok too - I think as mant different ways of approaching it is the best. So phonics, letterland, real books, jigsaws, I spy...
all excellent imo

Message withdrawn

Hi
I started to teach DS1 (4) the phonetic alphabet when he started trying to learn the the traditional one which he had on a dvd. The Jolly phonics CD was a good help as it geve him the correct pronunciation of all the letters.
Would defo recommend it.

we have the jolly phonics song cd although taking it very slowly. DD's 2y9m, her speech (i.e. her ability to make the sounds) is way behind her language ability so I don't know how to do phonics?! she learnt most of the capital letters by accident about a year ago but not much progress since, but she really wants to learn more. sorry for hijacking but would love some advice...

why would MNHQ delete a message on a thread about the alphabet?!

I think teaching phonetically is the best way round to do it - but try to introduce letter names aswell. My DS (now 7 and has struggled with reading) still gets completely confused about letter names and letter sounds and definitely couldn't cope with learning both at the same time. However my DD (just turned 5 in reception) - is pretty much teaching herself both and deals with it. Without bombarding them it is also important to to tell them that letters make different sounds when together with another letter. e.g. a 'o' & 'a' together 'oa' make a 'oh' sound. Sorry - not making much sense.

my 3dc preferred letterland to jolly phonics.
It's also handy when in the kitchen shouting it's "muching Mike" not "Naughty Nick" instead of "mmmm" not "nnnnn".

As a foreiner I still get confused when I have to use the proper alphabet names

Sounds first here. In fact, at Preschool we use Letter and Sounds (which they also use in school, but at a higher level). It;a about differentiating sounds in the environment, even before recognising letter sounds in words! We do things like C A T CAT blending as we say it.

Just like to add I bloody hate Letter Land as the children tend to learn the caractors and not the sound ie they look at A and call it Annie apple and not A.

Also better than learning sounds for little ones is learning to distnguish between different sounds for example go on a sound walk to see what they can hear, I would do a lot more of that than looking at letters as they will do all that in school.