Learning Letters

Teaching your child the letters of his or her name is another great way to prepare him/her for school. Before students learn to write their name, they need to be able to say the letters or recognize them if they are written. My husband came up with a catchy tune to teach our daughter her name. Now she goes around the house singing her "name song." She gets excited when she sees a word in a book that has one of "her" letters.

More important than teaching the name of letters to your child is teaching the sound that the letter makes. Knowing the "sound that the letter makes" is a vital skill in learning how to read. For example, teach your child that the letter "C" makes the sound in the beginning of the word "c-c-cold."  We really try to focus on teaching the sounds that letters make, in addition to letter identification.

A great DVD that teaches the sounds that letters make is Leap Frog's Letter Factory. This educational video is available at the library. I personally like it because it has a catchy mnemonic to teach the sound of each letter of the alphabet. This is a great dvd to teach letter knowledge, one of the six early literacy skills needed to become a successful reader.