How to teach Alphabet to kids? 9 Practical ideas.

Want to help your child in learning the alphabet? But do you think is it a hard task? Find various activities or ways. So I am here to provide a solution to your problems. In one word I suggest you keep it “FUN”. Don’t go one by one following any order. Don’t use any memorizing methods. It makes learning boring and a burden for the kids. Make the alphabet learning activity based using many fun learning methods.

Before jumping into How can you teach the alphabet to your kids? Let’s see 

Why do we need to teach the alphabet? 

Learning the alphabet is a journey towards homeschooling or pre-schooling. To read words, you need to learn the alphabet. Alphabet is the foundational base for reading English. It is a step towards the journey of reading. Identifying letters with sounds. Helps to read words. Reading words helps to read small sentences followed by large sentences. Gradually learn to read stories, essays, books, and so on. Alphabet learning is a part of the foundational literacy of kids. 

Now let us see:

How can you teach the alphabet to your kids?

There are so many activities and ways available on the internet. You can even find many videos of alphabet learning and identification. But here I am providing you with some practical ways and ideas of the teaching of alphabets. All these ideas and ways are tried and tasted. In real life, I am professionally a teacher. Every year I have to deal with tiny little kids. Who even doesn’t know how to hold the pen or pencils? To them, I have to teach. So these activities I am giving here are real and performed in the classroom situation by me. These all ideas will definitely help you, I assure you all. Now let’s see in detail what these ways or activities or ideas are. 

1. Music and action songs- “Just listen”
2. Phonics awareness
3. Use of art & craft as a learning method
4. Follow the curriculum
5. Teach basics of formation letters
6. Use of various fun activities
7. Keep watch on child growth
8. Use of printable resources
9. Knowledge of uppercase and lowercase

1.Music and action songs- “Just listen”:

Listening is the first step of learning. So at the first stage of pre-school where students just enter the school. You can use these readiness activities to make them comfortable in the school. These readiness activities help the kids to enjoy learning and love the school environment.

Rhymes and action songs are part of the readiness program. Kids enjoy rhymes, Music, and action songs most. So you can play alphabet songs with action. Let the children listen and perform the action. I also did the same activity in my class for a week. Children enjoyed and learned so quickly. When children listen to the songs of the alphabet, they become aware of many letters and also try to identify. These activities make the learning of alphabets enjoyable and everlasting. Here is a link to alphabet rhymes. You may use this or you can use other rhymes available on the internet.

Listening to Music is the best activity to teach alphabets to preschoolers. 

2. Phonics awareness:

When you have your first activity of Listening Music- Alphabet song, combine the second activity that is phonic awareness with it. Choose the rhymes in a way that has sound awareness of letters. Like A for Apple Aa, Aa, B for ball Ba,Ba. These kinds of phonics rhymes help not only learn alphabets but also is the first step of reading. To read words it’s necessary to have a knowledge of sounds or phonics. So make the base of kids in a way that they have phonics awareness at the beginning.

Here I  provide my video of phonics awareness. You can make your own videos or use other videos to teach sounds and letters to your kids. 

3. Use of art & craft as a learning method :

Children love cutting, pasting, coloring, puppetry, clay modeling, and many more art and crafts. They love to play with these crafts. As parents or teachers, we can use his/her interest in learning effectively. 

    You can use such a type of cutting, pasting, and coloring the letter methods to teach the alphabet.

You can instruct students to write letters with the help of – Rangoli colors

Flowers petals

Pulses like Dal

Flour

Sand any more. 

These ideas not only help to learn or remember letters but also they learn letter formation. This is a very fun activity to teach letter formation. 

Cutting the alphabet and pasting in front of objects is also one of the interesting craft activities to learn letters. 

Art and craft activity is a fun activity. Children enjoy and learn. So that learning becomes everlasting. We can co-relate other topics like color names, flowers’ names, and counting numbers. 

Art and craft activity promots experiential learning. If you want to know more about experiential learning. Read this article, It will surely help you to teach the kids effectively and use various play-way methods. 

4.Follow the curriculum:

As a teacher or parent you are dealing with the little kids,so it is your duty to follow the specific time based syllabus . You can not teach all the letters at a time. There should have a specific fix time and letters number to teach. Because our aim as a teacher is not to memorize or complete the syllabus but to make the foundational base strong. Learning the alphabet is one of the basic steps towards learning.

So it is your duty to decide and follow the curriculum. For example, to teach one letter or two letters in a week or four letters in a month. Likewise, you plan which letter you will teach in which month with pre-determined activity. 

Month	Letter	Activity
April	A, B,C,D,E
MAY	F,G,H,I,J….. So on… You can plan with Activity.

This will help you and at the same time, it does not burden the child. Learning should be burden-free and pre-planned. The curriculum plays a vital role in learning the alphabet.

5.  Teach basics of formation letters:

 Listening is the best practice for learning. After familiarization of letters by using audio-video aid. Now next is how to write the letters. The first way to write is to learn the formation of letters. For that children first need to have a practice of formation: 

Standing lines 

Sleeping lines

Curved lines

Joining dots

Slanting lines 

The practice of different patterns 

All the above ideas of practicing lines help to learn from letters. Tracing the lines is the best way to learn the formation of letters. 

These types of worksheets are available on the internet. You can even use a four lines notebook for more practice.

Formatting using colors or other items is again the best way.

These types of practical activities you can use to teach the formation of letters. 

So teaching the basic formation of letters is a very important task at the preschool level.

6.Use of various fun activities :

 Activity-based teaching is the best method for learning and teaching. Especially to teach letters/Alphabet you can use many activities that are available on the internet. Here I suggest some activities which I used during my class. These activities are interesting and useful.

1. Finding treasure -“letter from names” :

You can instruct the students to circle “D”

D O G    B A D     H E A D     M A D E     

2. Labeling the first letters from the given picture:

2. Matching the alphabet with given picture:

3. Puzzle hunt/ Finding a given letter from many letters.

4. Labeling the alphabet of any object:

Children Label as B- B for banana 

5. Loud reading of alphabet

6. Use of alphabet books for writing

7. Use of flashcards. Picture flashcards followed by the letter.

All these activities definitely will help you to teach the alphabet to the children. Make the learning joyful and Interesting.

7.Keep watch on child growth:

Apart from teaching and learning, the most important part is keeping a record of the child’s growth. As a teacher, it is your prime duty to continuously assess the child and keep a record of it. You should have a record of the learning of each child. And Progress of the child should be informed timely to the parents.

If you find any child is lacking or does not know any alphabet, as a teacher you should revise again and again and clear the doubts. Teachers should make sure to learning take place a hundred percent. And you should Pay individual attention to each child. 

To keep watch on child growth is one of the important aspects of learning not only alphabets but also any teaching-learning process. 

8. Use of Printable resourse

Printable materials like workbooks, worksheets are the best teaching aids to learn the alphabet. You can provide activity sheets of 

Colour the letter

Tracing the lines

Copy the letters

Matching the alphabets

Four Line writing practice worksheets

You can give the activity sheets and worksheets of each alphabet from A to Z. You can provide worksheets of uppercase and lowercase alphabets for better understanding.

You can use Pinterest or other search engines and download these kinds of printable resources. You can provide these materials to the kids for practice. These types of materials surely help the kids to learn alphabets. 

9. Knowledge of uppercase alphabet and lower case alphabet : 

While teaching letters to the kids it is most important to teach them both uppercase and lowercase letters. You can use the same ideas to teach lowercase letters. Make sure that they are able to identify the letters. For that, you need to give lots of practice on daily basis using various activities.

Conclusion:

Preschooling is a hard task for parents and teachers. And teaching the alphabet or letters to preschoolers is a harder task. To make your task easy I have provided some of my practical ideas and ways that I used during my teaching process. These activities and ways definitely will help you teach alphabets to your kids easily. Don’t make learning a burden and boring. But try to make the learning process fun and enjoyable for your kids. I assure you they will surely learn and enjoy the learning. 

You can also read this article on ways of teaching the alphabet. I read this article and I found this article very interesting and useful. 

Lastly, I would like to say if you want more ideas. Or else you want to add something from your experiences. You are most welcome, you can comment down below your doubts and ideas.