abc sound need advice!

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

my sound has the ability to identify and name all of the letters of the alphabet!
now i want to work on letter sound any one have any advise! what is the best way you have found to teach you child sounds, flash cards, videos, ect.
thanks for the help!

2

Munster718,

I just noticed your post as I’m about to teach my daughter the alphabet and sounds. I believe our children are about the same age. How did you teach your son to identify the alphabet? My daughter likes to sing. She knows the whole starfall alphabet song which includes the phonics sounds. But she hasn’t correlated the phonics sound or letter names to their actual written symbol. She sings " A, ah, alligator; B, buh, ball; C, cuh, computer; …" However when I show her the letter A, she can’t tell me that it is an “A” nor that it makes the “ah” sound. She is missing the crucial piece of the puzzle. So this week I began formally teaching her to match these unknown letter symbols with their names and sounds. I’m using letter magnets, BrillKids Alphabet on Little Reader, and the starfall.com site. I’m not feeling comfortable with my approach or getting results yet, but it is too soon to judge if I’m teaching it well.

I’m not sure that you still need advice since you posted this request over a month ago. But, anyway, here is the link for the starfall alphabet song: http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/song-abcs/load.htm?f. I think this song might help your son memorize the phonics sound for each letter.

Good Luck, Lori

3

I highly recommend Leapfrog letter factory. My son loves it and he has learned many letters and their sounds from it.

4

nhockaday,

Good idea. I actually already have it. I bought it years ago for my son but couldn’t get him to watch it, so it’s been in the basement in storage. I will have to go find it. My daughter is totally different so I bet she will love it. She likes to sing.

Thanks, Lori

5

I’m a teacher & I use a lot of alphabet books to teach the letter sounds.
For example, I point to the letter a and point to the picture apple and says
/a/ /a/ apple, /b/ /b/ ball, /c/ /c/ cat and so on.
You can actually use any alphabet book and adapt it to say the sounds of the
letter instead of saying the names of the letters.
Another alternative is to use ABC flash cards ( either commercial or homemade).
You can do the same.

6

My daughter only knows the letter sounds and not their names - we just pointed out letters everywhere and told her the sound they made. She does also have a set of small letter flashcards which she likes to play with.

Recently I started Starfall (www.starfall.com) with her and she loves it - it teaches both the letter name and the sound. We have started working on blending now but I am not sure if she is getting it or not.

7

I use a variety of things, vary them depending on what my son finds fun and interesting. “Brainy Baby ABC’s” teaches the alphabet as well as the sounds. I have an ABC giant floor puzzle which he loves to put together. I say where’s the ___ ? He finds it and puts it in the puzzle. This also is practice for reading the words that go with the letter. Also wooden alphabet blocks are useful for letter recognition - you can practice sounds with these too. We also use “My First Phonics Board book” but this is a little more advanced as it starts getting into letter combinations. http://us.dk.com/nf/Search/QuickSearchProc/1,,phonics,00.html?id=phonics . Last we have a giant outdoor chalkboard which we write letters on and he can play touch the letter or make the sound. I think doing a couple letters at a time, for example ABC till he got those before trying to learn the next ones was easier in the beginning.

8

I did numerous things… they worked great in combination… at 1.5 years my son knew the letter names and sounds…

  1. Letter of the week- pick a letter and do a theme for the week… show one letter on the fridge each week
  2. Leap Pad- letterbus toy, caterpillar toy, frodge phonics letter toy, alphabet movie
  3. Starfall www.starfall.com
  4. Singing ABCs and writing as we sing… sing it slow…sing, sing it silly, sing it using a different voice.
  5. Signing Times= They have a ABC signing video
  6. AbC jumping sound game… put ABCs on 8 x 11 paper or buy a foam puzzle carpet and hop on the ABCs in different directions… We have the carpet and had fun arranging it in different ways after a couple weeks… I would spell out different words like a crossword game from birth to about a year and a half like love… mom and my husband and I even had a silly game of seeing who could spell out more words and would take turns holding the baby… my son smiled at this game at 4 months of age… at a year and a half he just found it fun to break the foam letters so we put it away :wink:

Hope this helps