Children learn to recognize letters that have meaning for them personally, first. So findyourbliss is right, you need to start with the letters in her name. Start with her first letter. If her name is Jane, find her J everywhere. On cereal boxes, signs, newspapers, at the grocery store, and say “Oh look Janie, there’s your J!” and “I spy Janie’s J! Can you find it too?” When she starts pointing out her J to you, then move on to the next letters, on or two at a time. Then choose more letters that mean something to her. M and o might be good choices (m-o-m). Encourage her to try writing them too. In shaving cream on the table, in rice or flour on a cookie sheet, with finger paint, with crayons. Some children are tactile learners and she might pick them up quicker this way. Besides, it’s fun and she’ll love it!

Just a few at a time. I would start with the ones in her name.

A great video to use is LeapFrog Letter Factory. Both my kids, and many others that I know, learned the alphabet, recognition and the sounds letters make by the time they were 18-20 months old. It is a great learning tool.

Good luck

to add

The magnetic letters are a good idea. buy a cookie sheet to stick them to and use it and the letters together with your little one

Leapfrog has a refridgerator game with the letters too, my little one loves it.

Also, a fun game to play:

make large circles with the letters on them, you might want to have them laminated. Place them all out on the floor and call out a letter, have your child walk on the circles until she is on the letter you called out, take that circle away, and call another letter, remove each letter once it is called, you can only step on the circles, so once you get through a few letters you will have to jump or find a tricky link of cirlces to get where the letter you need is.

I hope I expalined that clear enough. It is a fun game

Hi,

there are two ways to do it

One way – memorizing just by repetition

Flash cards and so on – you will see a lot of advices about it.

This approach does not develop the brain. I am trying to avoid it when possible.

Another way – memorize by application.

Start from 2-3 contrasting sounds and then add each time 1 or 2. See “Words their way” by D.R. Bear, … – they give advices about the order…

Now, examples of activities:

1) child sorts pictures that starts from these sounds

2) child recognizes these letters when they are written by different fonts

3) game – child is looking for an object that is under …?… and you give a first letter S (sofa) T (table) B (bed)

Then child has to draw the letter to show where the object is….

4) making letters from Lego; from clay…

Try to make child to use her knowledge in order to solve a particular problem.

Good Luck

You could also get magnet letters at a dollar store, WalMart, etc. to put on the refrigerator as she is learning them. She may soon be able to pick out the ones she is learning in simple ABC books. I’ve seen several of those at dollar stores, too. There are also puzzles with ABC’s. Another idea is to let her make letters out of play dough. Aren’t kids fun at this age?

I’m a big fan of the Leapfrog fridge magnet set. The letters go into a little player on the fridge and, when pressed, it sings a song about the letter and the sound that it makes.

My son uses this to practice his letters at his own pace and is starting to recognize letter sounds in words.

I work in a low income neighborhood school as a kindergarten teacher and most of my students come in not being able to recognize ANY letters or knowing how to sing the ABCs at all.

We go ONE LETTER PER WEEK. So for five days in a row we will sing songs related to an “alphafriend” thats related to the letter of the week. Like for S we have a Seal with a name that starts with S. We sing about how he likes to Sit in the Sand and See Sail boats. You get it. Its so they hear the S sound and get familiar with associating the letter and its sound, etc.

Anyway we sing, paint, and glue and practice saying the name of the letter and its sound. Basicallly everything and anything that revolves around that letter for a certain portion of our school day for a whole week. If they dont get it after that week, it would be suprising. They wouldhave to be absent frequently or have maturity or attention issues.

Anyway, we continue on this way until every letter has been taught (yeah thats 26weeks) with time to review in between . Then we move on to digraphs like th, sh, ch, wh, etc.

Developmentally, that is the pace that kids in the 4 -5 range are at. (with a few exceptions of course) IF in two weeks, she only knows two letters well then that sounds about right for where she is developmentally. She’d be normal for a four year old so dont go freakin’ out. Your going to have to lower your expectations a bit. Four year olds dont learn like adults do or like older children do.

So starting Monday, introduce your first letter and stick with it until Friday. Since you only have 1 child and I teach 20 kids, you can start with the most important letters to a child: the letters in her name! In a class full of kids with different names we can’t accomodate everyone so we just pick S,M,R,T,B,N,H,A, and go from there until all 26 are covered. The letters in a child name are HIGHLY motivating to learn.

Gestures are important with young children. Trace the letter in the air as you sing a poem/song about the letter-of-the-week. Have her copy your gestures. Once, she learns how to copy your gestures and the poem/song. Give her a fat pencil and sing the song again only this time write it on paper as you sing instead of tracing in the air.

Of course practice singing the ABC song, expose her letters using different mediums, get some letter cards or magnetic letters and have her put the letters order according to the ABC song etc.

A fun arts and crafts activity (that also reinforces fine motor skills) is to take a marker to a piece of paper and make a big letter on it then have her glue cheerios onto the black marker. So in the end there is a letter made out of cheerios or rice or beans. Put it on the fridge.

Continue on with as many letters as you have weeks left before she starts Kindergarten. Oh by the way, thats how we teach the numbers too! One number per week.

A great helper for you will be found here:

http://www.edutunes.com I recommend her Phonics Time program. The track called “ABC fun” is great. We use it to supplement our curriculum. The kids love the songs and the gestures we make up for them.

Also, go to http://www.fonts4teachers.com/site/products.cfm

and buy the simplest package the 10$ one. To help her write her letters and numbers.

i tried everything…but the best one is just to get a flashcard and play a game. now that’s fun. for example you can lay down three cards and point out the names of the letters then test her by playing a game. ask her which one among the three is the letter A. kids loves it. with regards to writing, it is better to hold it off till the kid is 4 years old. just do a lot of fine motor skills activities. you can cut out a big letter then punch holes on the side and give her a yarn to string the holes with.

1. Go slow

2. Have your kid pick the letter to study and move ahead when they want to learn a new letter.

3. Boil spaghetti and have kid draw letters on wax paper.

4. Sing songs

5. Use word association

6. Learn movements (sign language and dance)

7. Have kid take deep swallow before pronouncing. (less spit more clarity)

8. Have kid teach another kid

To repeat what findyourbliss said, the LeapFrog video is wonderful. y daughter and nephew also learned their letters and letter sounds really quickly, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a great thing for her to watch in addition to you playing games with her.

Teach them at first two or three at a time, and go slow. You don’t want to overwhelm her. It seems you understand the process really well so just watch her, don’t over load her, and make sure she doesn’t become scared of learning.