Do you know what I love? Questions from Mamas. ESPECIALLY when I have the answers! While there are oodles and oodles of parenting questions I could not even take a stab at, those related to learning—and specifically alphabet learning? I’ve got your back.

How do you introduce letters? Capitals? Lower case? What order? When do you introduce sounds?

Since the alphabet is such a major learning piece for little ones, I thought I would write to you today all things Alphabet Learning. 

(Please be warned, the teacher voice is coming out!)

Just before we get into my tips, you’ll love these FREE Letters & Sounds Cards. They are perfect for practicing beginning sounds with your little one:

Since this is SUCH an important topic, I created a complete learn-to-read resource that walks you through everything your child needs to learn to read.

I know many of you are bound to read this blog post and think, “Yes! It sounds great! But can’t you just lay it out for my day-by-day?”

Why yes I can!

How Wee Read covers it all. From rhyming to reading in 70 sequential, simple, and beautiful lessons:

• Step One: Phonological Awareness (7 lessons)
• Step Two: Letters, Sounds, and Blending (12 lessons)
• Step Three: Special Rules (4 lessons)
• Step Four: Decodable Readers (47 lessons)

You might have noticed that there is a step that comes BEFORE your little one learns their letters and sounds. That step is Phonological Awareness, which involves hearing and manipulating the sounds in words. There are seven Phonological Awareness skills:  

1. Rhyming
2. Word Awareness
3. Sound Identification
4. Syllable Awareness
5. Sound Segmenting
6. Sound Blending
7. Deleting Sounds

I won’t go into too much detail in this post, but you can read all about Phonological Awareness and why it is so important right here: https://www.howweelearn.com/what-is-phonological-awareness-and-how-do-i-teach-it/

I will say that a big part of Phonological Awareness is reading (and reading and reading) to little ones, and talking (and talking and talking) to little ones. Giving lots of opportunities to hear lots of words and sounds is key!

Once your child has been exposed to those seven skills – which are all auditory, they are ready to start matching the sounds they now know with the letters that make them.

Alphabet Learning: Name Letters

Alphabet recognition is the ability to recognize letters. There are many different levels to this step in learning.

At first, I like to introduce little ones to their name letters. I love name puzzles (such as our recent Apple Name Puzzle) to help with this alphabet recognition skill.

• In the beginning, preschoolers will learn each of their name letters.
• Then, they will be able to recognize them from each other (recognize the ‘S’ from the letters ‘S,’ ‘A,’ and ‘M’).
• And finally, they will be able to recognize their name letters from the other letters of the alphabet (recognize the ‘S’ from the rest of the alphabet).

Once little ones have a firm understanding of their name letters, I begin to introduce alphabet recognition for the rest of the alphabet.

Alphabet Learning: All Other Letters

(And once again, I am here to say that YES! I do have this planned out for you already, day-by-day, and step by step in How Wee Read!)

Alright, teaching all the other letters – I do this in two ways:

The first—and this is a personal choice—is by using this order for introducing the alphabet. I wrote a post all about The Order for Teaching Letters too.

This is the way we do it in How Wee Read as it allows us to start building word families immediately! Watching our little ones be able to understand how letters fit together to create words is priceless – and the confidence it instills in them has them wanting to keep on going!

And the second way I introduce alphabet recognition for preschoolers—and this one only works well with one or two little ones at a time—is by adding names and sight words, one at a time.

For Sammy, once he knew his name, he started to learn the other names of family members. We did this through lots of play and games—like this Family Post Office.

Once he started to recognize these names, we started to work on the alphabet recognition of the letters within each name. Once Sam had learned his brother and sister’s names, Mommy and Daddy, and a few others he was interested in, he had only a few letters remaining.

While little ones are beginning their alphabet learning and practicing their alphabet recognition, I play lots and lots of games. This one Sammy and I played recently. We have done a lot of alphabet recognition activities for preschoolers, and he is to the point of recognizing almost all of them.

So we did an alphabet recognition scavenger hunt. 

This scavenger hunt was super duper easy to set up—just the way learning should be! I took sticky notes and wrote the alphabet on them—one letter per sticky note. I then hid these sticky notes around the family room.

Sammy’s job was to find each letter in order and line them on the wall. He took his job very seriously and was so excited to find each and every letter!

He did get stuck on a couple of letters, so I had him leave a space and continue. When he was done, there were only four letters left. He gathered them, and I asked him, “Which one of those four letters do you think is the ‘G’?” Since there were only a few letters left, he could easily recognize each letter.

This activity could be adapted to suit any little learner of the alphabet. The letters could be already on the wall, and little ones find and match the alphabet. Only a few letters could be missing (name letters or letters that the kids are familiar with). The possibilities are really endless.

I hope this post on alphabet recognition for preschoolers was a helpful first step in your little one’s alphabet learning.

I am a big believer in play-based learning and waiting until children show an interest in print and letters to begin. If your little one does not yet want to learn letters, consider waiting—according to many researchers and authors, there is absolutely no harm (and actually a lot of benefits!) to waiting to introduce alphabet learning in kids.

Until my little ones are ready, we read (and read) and talk (and talk).

For absolutely everything you need to teach your child to read—from rhyming to reading—take a peek at How Wee Read right here:

https://shop.howweelearn.com/pages/how-wee-read

Thank you so much for reading, friends. I hope you are having a lovely start to your week!

xo
Sarah