Fun activities to teach your child the letters of the alphabet
If your pre-schooler has started talking fluently, you might feel it is time to start teaching him letters. After all learning begins at home and you do not have to wait for a school-teacher to expand your child’s knowledge. However you will also want to teach this in a fun way so that your child does not have any negative associations with learning. So, here are some fun ways to start teaching your pre-schooler his/her letters :
Hide-and-seek with Letters:
What you will need:
Buy some large foam letters or make cut-outs of all the letters from colourful chart papers or cardboard (make sure they are at least the size of an A-4 sheet!)
How to play:
Tell your child that she has to read her alphabet book as this is the hide-and-seek map.
Spend some time reading the book. Then you can tell your child to go inside the room while you hide (or generally place) some or all of the letters around the house. However the catch is that you will place the letter on or near an object whose name starts with that letter. If a letter is placed on the wrong object, then your child has to show you what the correct letter is (you can place some letters near you for your child to identify or exchange). Make sure you place the letters according to your child’s capacity. Certain letters like M, F, D or R don’t change phonetically so it will be easier for your child to identify unlike C (“chair” does not easily, phonetically identify the letter C) or A (“apron” and “apple” have different A sounds).
Other activities to help you tot with letters:
- Teach the alphabet with some yummy alphabet cookies! Alphabet moulds are available and you can try making your child interested in alphabets through his/her tummy! (How to handle picky eaters)
- Put alphabet magnets on your fridge which your child can arrange and rearrange as you teach him the A,B,C,D song or make him arrange it in order after you jumble it up. Let him generally have fun with them.
- You can help your child recognize the alphabet by asking her what she thinks the alphabet looks like. For example the letter A could look like a house or a tent. So you can call the letter A the ‘tent alphabet’. By making her identify and match it you are letting her make her own associations which will help her remember the alphabets easier the next time you read them together.
Related topics:
Activities for toddlers to develop fine motor skills
Activities for toddlers to develop gross motor skills
Activities for preschoolers to develop cognitive skills
Activities for preschoolers to develop motor skills
