This week I had a fabulous new Tot School Mommy ask me what order I teach the alphabet. I've had this question a couple of times before, so I decided to go ahead and share my personal experience. Let me just say that am in no way a "What Order to Teach the Alphabet" expert, but I do have thoughts! :)
So if you wanted to be all researchy (yes, a word) and technical, there ARE well-researched theories on the most effective way to teach the alphabet. I've seen several different orders used in Pre-K & Kindergarten classrooms. Guess what? They all worked. The kids learned their alphabet. If you're interested in checking out some more researched methods, here are a few sites I found that had a more science based method to their madness. (Just click)
My personal method was less based on science and more based on my kid! Beckett is 22 months and is not super well spoken yet. He still struggles with forming sounds and pronouncing MOST words. When we started learning the letters (around 17 months), he barely said anything, so my approach had to be one that worked for him!
So if you wanted to be all researchy (yes, a word) and technical, there ARE well-researched theories on the most effective way to teach the alphabet. I've seen several different orders used in Pre-K & Kindergarten classrooms. Guess what? They all worked. The kids learned their alphabet. If you're interested in checking out some more researched methods, here are a few sites I found that had a more science based method to their madness. (Just click)
My personal method was less based on science and more based on my kid! Beckett is 22 months and is not super well spoken yet. He still struggles with forming sounds and pronouncing MOST words. When we started learning the letters (around 17 months), he barely said anything, so my approach had to be one that worked for him!
We started by just playing with the alphabet a lot. I talked about all of the letters as we played. Then when I was ready to be intentional about him identifying & repeating the letters, I started with A. I had no rhyme or reason, other than it's at the beginning of the alphabet!
From there, we continued to play with all of our letters, but focused on the letter A, asking him to repeat it, identify it within the toys, etc.
Once he "mastered" the letter A, I followed is lead on which letters to learn next. As we played and talked, he would attempt to repeat various letters. When he was able to say one fairly well, I focused on that letter next.
Five months later, Beckett is able to identify all of his letters, and tries to pronounce all of them. One of the letters he still struggles to pronounce well is S (he says, "eh.") For us, none of the "researched" methods would have worked, because S is the FIRST letter they recommend.
So my recommendation on letter order for your Tot? Do what works for THEM. You may try one of the reserached methods, but tweak it to fit your needs! That is the glorious perk of being at home and one on one with your fave!
For more details on how we learned the alphabet, check out this post!:
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