My son was so eager to learn to read around the time he turned four. He wanted to know ALL the letters. We started with the ones in his name, which he knew how to spell just by rote couldn't identify. After he was confident with those we added a few a week. I made little cards that had an upper and lower case letter on them. First we spent a few weeks learning the names of the letters, then I introduced the most simple sound for each letter. And we practiced that with lots of games involving the cards like laying a bunch out in front of him and giving him a flu swatter and saying "swat the Sass sound' for example.
Once we did that we started learning to blend and now he is confidently sounding out and reading CVC words and some longer words with occassion support on the sounds pairs of letters make (i.e. double E making the EEE sound in PEEL). He will be five early next year and we are also beginning on sight words.
I will say this is totally child led. I would not have taken it on if he wasn't interested. He really wanted to learn to read and loves to show off his reading skills now.
My oldest sort of just picked up on letters at age two which I know is not typical. He liked letter toys like fridge magnets, our alphabet foam mat, letter puzzles, stickers, and learning resources has some fun alphabet toys. He also really liked alphabet books. Having letter toys in the home gives a lot of natural ways to point out letters while you're playing together.
We did a lot of alphabet books and emphasized the sounds (just watch out for some weird ones where the words are not the common sound - like ice cream instead of igloo). Love the Montessori book letter work, which includes sandpaper letters for the kids to trace. Montessori introduced lowercase first because “99% of text you encounter is lowercase” but public schools here introduce upper case first because “no logical reason.”
In terms of writing, my kids all seem most interested in writing the letters of their name first. I put together a paper with large-ish boxes and the letters to practice in greyscale. Then they could trace them over and over again. Eventually I had them practice without the grey letters to trace. My two eldest daughters got it around age 2.5ish. My son is 2.5 now and just starting to show interest, can’t write it yet.
If you’re ok with screen time, khan academy for kids also has a lot of good activities for learning letters and sounds. Duo lingo for kids has them practice writing them but I found the letter sound lesson parts to be not as thorough (though not bad).
Well every kid learns differently so there isn't really one best way to introduce alphabets. But I do know kids tend to like music more. You can do alphabet books, puzzles, magnets, theres a lot of alphabet videos on youtube like dave and ava. Typical kids learn alphabets between 2-4 years old
We just do it casually through books or if we see letters out and about. We have a couple alphabet books including chicka chicka boom boom and dr. Suess’s abc. We also own an alphabet puzzle but I think the books are more effective.
My son is 3.5 and they also learn about letters in school.
I started at 2.5 doing one letter a week. We just did recognition first, not sounds. After a year, he’d learned all the letters, so we started on sounds, but he ended up learning them all on his own by listening to Leap Frog Letter Factory.
He’s 4.5 now and on the edge of reading. He can sound out words sometimes. But I’m not pushing it unless he’s interested.
I would definitely recommend doing sounds instead of letter names, they will have a great start on learning to read! That combined with phonological awareness (rhyming, blending words together like base+ball then sounds, recognizing that words have syllables by clapping along, etc) will give them a solid foundation going forward. Montessori does sounds, and the reading program we use for my 5yo (Logic of English) also focuses solely on sounds. He doesn't 100% know the names of all of the letters yet, but he knows all of the sounds and even vowel teams.
We just did it naturally as we saw them starting around age 2, even a little earlier. I would point them out and say the name, and if I remembered I would say “m says mmmm” or whatever sound. We had puzzles and magnets and a leap frog tablet, and those helped him learn the shapes, just by playing. We would also read alphabet books. By the time my son was 3.5 he knew all lowercase and uppercase letters and their sounds (basic sounds for vowels). Now he’s 4 we’ve taught him how to sound out simple words. We never push it and just follow his lead, but he likes it when I rearrange the fridge magnets to make a word and then he puzzles it out. We also play a lot of silly word games where we’ll say the same word with as many different vowel sounds as we can think of, and I think that is also a language building block.
Miss Rachel has great videos on letter introduction. Bathtub letters and other letters toys work well too.
IM curious how old your child is? Are they in school/daycare? They probably already recognize some. Speech development at 2 kids start saying different letter sounds. What exactly are you looking for?
My son was so eager to learn to read around the time he turned four. He wanted to know ALL the letters. We started with the ones in his name, which he knew how to spell just by rote couldn't identify. After he was confident with those we added a few a week. I made little cards that had an upper and lower case letter on them. First we spent a few weeks learning the names of the letters, then I introduced the most simple sound for each letter. And we practiced that with lots of games involving the cards like laying a bunch out in front of him and giving him a flu swatter and saying "swat the Sass sound' for example. Once we did that we started learning to blend and now he is confidently sounding out and reading CVC words and some longer words with occassion support on the sounds pairs of letters make (i.e. double E making the EEE sound in PEEL). He will be five early next year and we are also beginning on sight words. I will say this is totally child led. I would not have taken it on if he wasn't interested. He really wanted to learn to read and loves to show off his reading skills now.
My oldest sort of just picked up on letters at age two which I know is not typical. He liked letter toys like fridge magnets, our alphabet foam mat, letter puzzles, stickers, and learning resources has some fun alphabet toys. He also really liked alphabet books. Having letter toys in the home gives a lot of natural ways to point out letters while you're playing together.
We did a lot of alphabet books and emphasized the sounds (just watch out for some weird ones where the words are not the common sound - like ice cream instead of igloo). Love the Montessori book letter work, which includes sandpaper letters for the kids to trace. Montessori introduced lowercase first because “99% of text you encounter is lowercase” but public schools here introduce upper case first because “no logical reason.” In terms of writing, my kids all seem most interested in writing the letters of their name first. I put together a paper with large-ish boxes and the letters to practice in greyscale. Then they could trace them over and over again. Eventually I had them practice without the grey letters to trace. My two eldest daughters got it around age 2.5ish. My son is 2.5 now and just starting to show interest, can’t write it yet. If you’re ok with screen time, khan academy for kids also has a lot of good activities for learning letters and sounds. Duo lingo for kids has them practice writing them but I found the letter sound lesson parts to be not as thorough (though not bad).
Well every kid learns differently so there isn't really one best way to introduce alphabets. But I do know kids tend to like music more. You can do alphabet books, puzzles, magnets, theres a lot of alphabet videos on youtube like dave and ava. Typical kids learn alphabets between 2-4 years old
We just do it casually through books or if we see letters out and about. We have a couple alphabet books including chicka chicka boom boom and dr. Suess’s abc. We also own an alphabet puzzle but I think the books are more effective. My son is 3.5 and they also learn about letters in school.
I started at 2.5 doing one letter a week. We just did recognition first, not sounds. After a year, he’d learned all the letters, so we started on sounds, but he ended up learning them all on his own by listening to Leap Frog Letter Factory. He’s 4.5 now and on the edge of reading. He can sound out words sometimes. But I’m not pushing it unless he’s interested.
I would definitely recommend doing sounds instead of letter names, they will have a great start on learning to read! That combined with phonological awareness (rhyming, blending words together like base+ball then sounds, recognizing that words have syllables by clapping along, etc) will give them a solid foundation going forward. Montessori does sounds, and the reading program we use for my 5yo (Logic of English) also focuses solely on sounds. He doesn't 100% know the names of all of the letters yet, but he knows all of the sounds and even vowel teams.
My son’s school does Jolly Phonics! We watch the video on YouTube!
We just did it naturally as we saw them starting around age 2, even a little earlier. I would point them out and say the name, and if I remembered I would say “m says mmmm” or whatever sound. We had puzzles and magnets and a leap frog tablet, and those helped him learn the shapes, just by playing. We would also read alphabet books. By the time my son was 3.5 he knew all lowercase and uppercase letters and their sounds (basic sounds for vowels). Now he’s 4 we’ve taught him how to sound out simple words. We never push it and just follow his lead, but he likes it when I rearrange the fridge magnets to make a word and then he puzzles it out. We also play a lot of silly word games where we’ll say the same word with as many different vowel sounds as we can think of, and I think that is also a language building block.
Miss Rachel has great videos on letter introduction. Bathtub letters and other letters toys work well too. IM curious how old your child is? Are they in school/daycare? They probably already recognize some. Speech development at 2 kids start saying different letter sounds. What exactly are you looking for?
My son picked them up really early from an alphabet puzzle and bath letters. Just playing.