Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Creative Ways to Teach the Alphabet

I've been looking for ways to teach my kids the alphabet and found an article in the July/August issue of MomSense, the magazine from MOPS, that had some great ideas to try. Sponge Paint the Letters Using a black marker, draw the outline of a letter on a large piece of paper and give the kids a sponge and some washable paint. They can practice staying in the lines, exercise their artistic abilities and learn to recognize letters at the same time. Body Letters Using a roll of paper and crayons or chalk on the patio, shape your child into a letter and trace around their body. Let them color in the shape while teaching them the letter. Letter Hunt Hide refrigerator sized alphabet letters or ABC puzzle pieces around the room for your child to find. You can use this to reinforce words like 'under' and 'behind' or you can hide the letters near a corresponding item (C by the couch, T by the television, etc). Once a letter is found, help your child string together the alphabet in order. Alphabet Soup Put a mixture of magnets or puzzle pieces in a soup pot and ask your child to find certain letters. You can also pull the letters out and ask your child what the letter is. Alphabet Memory Play a version of Memory using upper and lowercase letters. Have your child turn over two pieces trying to match 'A with a' 'B with b.' I'm not sure how many of these I can use with my two year olds, but I'm going to try to keep learning interesting for them by adapting some of these ideas. Can you think of any other fun alphabet ideas?

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