When your little one quickly jumps into the preschool years, there is a lot to think about when it comes to school. However, when you are homeschooling the jump doesn’t seem so scary and it doesn’t have to be! Here are ten fun ways to teach the alphabet to your little learner!
One of the biggest things preschoolers learn is letter recognition and the alphabet. It is an essential skill and the first step towards developing phonics and reading abilities. Three and four-year-olds need to find the activities fun and engaging to keep their interest.
10 Fun Ways To Teach The Alphabet
Coming up with these engaging and fun alphabet activities was a blast! You and your preschooler are going to love them!
1. Alphabet and Phonics Workbook
It is always great to have a book where your child can practice letter formation and writing. Having an alphabet workbook is a great resource! Tracing letters, dot-to-dot drawings, capital and lowercase letter pages are just a few of the activities you’ll find in the workbook. It is also helpful to complete the alphabet workbook as you study each letter and as your child completes some of the fun activities below.
2. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
This storybook is a resource you want to keep handy and one of my favorite alphabet books. Reading as you learn about the alphabet and teaching each letter is excellent. It is a dun way to teach the alphabet and to introduce the alphabet activities and get your preschooler thinking about the different shapes of the letters and precisely what they look like!
3. Letter of the week
Studying a letter of the week will help your child really learn that specific letter, sound, and you can even incorporate uppercase and lowercase if you would like. Create a letter craft around each of the letters. Make an A into an alligator or an I into an igloo.
There are tons of different options, and you can focus on a specific letter a week when working through an alphabet workbook or reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, as mentioned above.
4. Pipe Cleaners
This is a great activity that helps with letter recognition and fine motor skills. Have your little one take the pipe cleaners and bend them into the letter you are learning about. Every kid loves to create with pipe cleaners, and children can use them repeatedly.
5. Musical Letters
Put letters on index cards or use small magnetic letters for this fun alphabet game! Place the letters on the floor and play music. Have your child move around the room and when the music stops, they have to go to the closest letter. If you want to expand this game and make it more challenging, have your little one name three things that start with the letter they are standing on.
6. Eat The Alphabet
So many ideas come to mind when you use food to practice letters. You can use cookie cutters and create Jello letters, or alphabet sandwiches and alphabet soup. Even your pancakes can be shaped into letters. Plus, kids love to help in the kitchen, and using spoons, measuring, pouring, and mixing can help their gross motor skills. This is such a fun way to learn the alphabet!
7. Label It
Go on a scavenger hunt around the house and look for different items starting with a specific letter or letters. Have your child practice writing the letter on a post-it note and stick it right to the object!
8. Trace Letters
Another fun way to help your child learn letters is to trace the letters in spices or shaving cream. Because spices can stain, I suggest doing this on a tray or in a pan. Shaving cream is fantastic on windows because it makes them nice and shiny when wiped off—killing two birds with one stone, in my opinion!
9. Easter Egg Match
Once your preschooler learns uppercase letters, you may want to help them learn how to recognize lowercase letters, which is often a little more challenging. Using Easter eggs and having the child match the uppercase letter and lowercase letter together is a great way to learn letters of both types!
10. Singing Songs
Music is a great way to help your child learn letters! The ABC song is a great one. It helps your little ones to get the order of the alphabet and the letter names stuck in their head easily.
Fun Ways to learn the alphabet and learning letters for littles
Whether making letter pancakes or writing on windows with shaving cream, homeschooling opens so many doors to allow your child to learn in engaging and interactive ways.
Remember, at the preschool age, 20 minutes of learning is the perfect amount because we all know they learn best through play at that age anyway! Don’t forget to grab your alphabet workbook to make teaching letters even easier! We hope you enjoyed our favorite ten fun ways to teach the alphabet. Let us know which activities you tried!
