Can your child sing the alphabet song, but
doesn't know that 'elemenopee' is actually five different letters
from the alphabet?
For a young child, 26
is a lot of letters to learn. When my daughter was having trouble
really learning her letters, we came up with a fun way for her to
learn the alphabet one letter at a time.
Katherine’s Letter and Word
book gave her a chance to work with letters in a way that made it
easy for her to learn their sounds. I’ve been amazed at how much progress she
has made in a short time. She surprises me by identifying the letter
that starts words even when she first hears the word.
Kids have fun with crafts.
Materials ( 3 ring binding, lots of paper, tape, some old magazines or
catalogs, scissors, and a pen or pencil)
Ask you child to pick their favorite letter
from the alphabet. We started with K for Katherine. To make a divider for
that letter, pick the color of paper you want to use. Have your
child write the capital and small forms of the letter on the
divider. You may have to write them on a different page and have
your child copy it to the divider page.
For the tab, have your child write the
letter from the alphabet on a scrap of paper. Then cut it out. Use a 1.5 inch
(3cm) piece of clear tape. Decide where the tab should go on the
side of the page. Hold the paper tab against the side of the
page and tape the two together. Make sure there is enough of the
tape to fold across the back of the tab to the divider
page. You could use pre-made alphabet divider pages if you have
them. Don’t put them all in the binder at the beginning. Let
your child add the page for each letter when you work on it.
After the alphabet divider page, put in a sheet of
blank paper and a sheet of lined paper.
Talk about the sound that the letter makes.
Ask your child to think of words that start with that sound.
Write those words on the front of the lined paper. If your child comes
up with a word that has the letter, but not at the beginning,
write those words on the back of the page. (eg. KITE on the front of the
page, BAKE on the back).
When your child runs out of words, get out
some old magazines, catalogs or sales flyers. Find pictures of
words that start with the letter of the alphabet. Paste them on the blank sheet
of paper and write the word under the picture.
Each day,
work with 2-3 different letters. Don’t try to do all the whole
alphabet in one week. Your child should have a chance to work with the
letters individually. It took us about a month to finish all 26
letters.
You and your child will find lots of different
ways to use this binder. One morning, I found Katherine copying
words from your picture dictionary onto the right pages of her
letter and word book. A few days latter, she realized that two of my
friends had names that started with the letter J and she wanted to
add them to her word list. We’ve started a new section at the back
for stories. She likes to make up a story using all the words
starting with the same letter.
Send us a note if you have any questions.
Children love making gifts for their parents and other adults who
are important to them. But what can they make that will delight the
person they are giving the gift to?
Here's how you can quickly and easily get lots of simple, high quality
gift ideas that you children can make. Guaranteed to be fun the
children making the gift, and a delight for the person receiving it.
