Learning the ABCs

Learning the ABCs

After watching parents with their kids, it seems like a lot of them think that the ABCs isn’t something that needs to be taught to a toddler, at least not until they are much closer to kindergarten. But I disagree. Which is why my two year old (26 months) knows all but 6 of his letters, and he only mixes up the ones that look familiar with another, for example I and T or M and W. Now I know I can’t take credit for ALL of this, a lot of it has to go to him, and his willingness to learn. But heck I made him so I should get credit.

I can’t honestly pinpoint when I started teaching him the alphabet but it was when he was pretty young. And I’ve always read to him ever since I brought him home from the hospital.

One of the books we read is the Crayola ABC book

It’s not a very interesting read for mommy but he loves it so we read it. And now he can kind of read it to me.

We also read Dr. Seuss’ ABC book

To be honest this is a MUCH better book to read.  But even reading it 20 times in a row gets tiring.

While reading to him with these books and other books I point to the words, so that he knows there’s a specific story that goes along with this book, and that’s where it is found. Other than reading I also bought him Leapfrog’s ABC toy.

Originally I bought it in hopes that it would distract him from my cell phone. But that plan back fired. It made him more interested in it. But even though this toy is great for learning the alphabet – Thomas likes to hold it upside down so we had a little rough patch when he could only tell you what a letter was if it was upside down. But that was fixable.

Another toy that I have bought for him is the Vtech Innotab 2

And he absolutely loves it. As do I. I haven’t had any downfalls with it yet. But be forewarned buy the rechargeable batteries and the charger otherwise it will shoot threw batteries like no one’s business. Your welcome Duracell.  

Other than that it was pretty much just practice, practice, practice. And A LOT of the “parrot game.” You know the game, where they have to repeat everything you say.

I guess we also had those little plastic magnetic letters for the fridge. But he never played with them that much. And there’s a big “Don’t put it in your mouth” problem.

We do a lot of writing and rewriting the letters. I like to write the letters and he will tell me what it is. And after he got more confident in them I don’t write them in order. I jump all over the alphabet like a flee on crack.

I try to change it up so that it doesn’t get boring and he no longer wants to keep learning. We write on the cupboard with dry erase markers, on different types and colors of paper, with different types of writing utensils. I’ll make letters out of play dough for him to tell me what they are. There’s a huge list of possibilities on ways to keep it interesting for memorization. Also he likes to watch me on the computer and point out letters that he sees. He LOVES to point out the “x” like I have no idea it’s there. But as he does that I ask him what letter to find and he points to it and tells me its name over again. Just keep the games changing.

After this we will have to work on writing the letters, but I’ll take my victories where and when I can. And as of now my son knows the most of his alphabet. That alone makes me one extremely proud Momma.

Like my mom told me – They won’t know it unless you teach it to them. So you don’t have to wait until you kid is in kindergarten or pre-K to learn scholarly things. And it’s never too early to teach them something.