I'm not good at following a program or being very methodical about things, but here's a few things I do to encourage this with my kiddos (ages 3-5):

We incorporate our ABCs into everything we do. For the most part, we don't do a letter of the week, we just learn it all as we go. I do tend to teach them upper case before lower case, but we have both available in the room.

First step for us is to learn to recognize our names and our friends names. So we do a lot of activities with our names when the children are learning those. I encourage them to write their name on every picture they make (even if they just write lines or cirlces for their name in the beginning, great!).

We also have a sign in book and the children have to sign in their names every day. They often start out making pictures or drawing circles on their names (I start them when they're 3 yrs old). But, when they become interested we start working on forming each letter.

We have a helper of the day and that person's name is written on our calendar. So, when the children come in the first question they ask is "who is the helper of the day". So, we work on figuring out what day it is and then read the child's name. This also helps them with learning their numbers and 'reading' a chart. They also have to refer to the calendar's date when they sign in later in the day because they need to sign in under the right day. As they get older, I don't right in the date on their sign in book, only the day (monday, etc) and they can write in the number date themselves.

We do a lot of alphabet hunts (I have cards that each have a letter on them and I hide them around the room every couple of weeks and they have to find them. They bring them back and then we work together to put them in ABC order.

We use magnetic letters (I put them on a large cookie sheet where I've written the letter in permanent marker and they can match them up). I have an upper case sheet and a lower case sheet. We play alphabet bingo.

The purpose of everything I do is just to give them exposure and practice with their letters and numbers. We get things wrong all the time, we right our letters weird and backwards (all developmentally appropriate) and I don't really correct much except grip (when they get older) and sometimes I will correct how they are writing their letters-but only when they're on the older end of the spectrum. I want them to feel comfortable to just write without the worry of me telling them they're doing it wrong.

One of the things I do with phonics is a letter bag. My older group (4-5 yr olds- but younger ones can do this too) brings home a brown paper bag each week that they wrote a letter (upper and lower case) on and they need to bring it back with an item (or several items) that start with that letter. The kids LOVE this! Like, love love love it. It helps that I have very involved parents, so they really encourage this activity. Most weeks each child brings in an average of 6 or 7 items. Then we gather and they take turns showing the other kids what they brought that starts with the letter. We practice the letter sounds a lot during this time (all of the sounds that the letter makes, but I try to emphasize the particular sound that kindy will teach). I write down each item that was brought in and when we're all done we count how many items we brought in and I write that down as well. For one of the letters this year the kids brought in 100 items (I have 6 kids)!! By the end of the year, I usually have a few kids that bring in a piece of paper where they drew the items that started with the letter instead of bringing in items. They will sometimes write the words on their paper as well. I love this activity and although it makes the parents work and I know many of them do it in a rush the night before, it gets everyone thinking about how we can encourage the kids to learn this in a fun way.

When we have grocery store play, I try to gather a couple of kids to make signs for the store, Veggies, Fruits, etc.

Hope that helps! I'm excited to read what everyone else does with this!

Reply