Top 10 ways to teach your kids Alphabets at home

A Facebook status said, “Very excited to hear my 18 month old baby saying B when I say A and D when I say C”. When I read the statement I felt, what is so excited about it. But I was able to feel the excitement when my kid did the same when she was a year and half. At the age of 3, my daughter now recognizes some of the 4-5 letter words and spells some of her favorite words. Every mother has dreams to teach her kid in different ways and so did I. Here I wish to share some of the experience I had in teaching my kid the alphabets.

When it comes to making reading a part of your child’s everyday life, one of the most important things to remember is to keep it fun. Make learning into a game and your child will always like it. Attention spans are limited for kids so always make it short and simple. Don’t teach for the sake of teaching, enjoy yourself when you are teaching and obviously your child will enjoy reading. Make funny sounds and gestures when you are teaching them.

Many experts say babies understand more than most parents think they do. Your baby continues to soak up everything in his environment. His favorite activity is watching what goes on around him, and he understands now that you will soothe, feed, and play with him when he needs you. Start playing with alphabets with your baby. When you are feeding him make them sit in their chair and show them a book of colorful alphabets. As said earlier, make it short and don’t expect any reactions at this stage. Just keep on continuing your job of teaching the alphabets/numbers in an excited way. You have to wait to see the results.

Children enjoy songs very much compared to plain text. Sing alphabet songs when you feed them, make them sleep and whenever possible. If your toddler is introduced to computers and Internet encourage them to watch different kinds of Alphabet and number songs on Youtube. If you are going on a long travel, try using an alphabet song CD in your child’s portable DVD player. Introduce them to alphabet songs whenever possible.

Flash cards are one of the best ways to study. When you keep showing the flash cards to the children repeatedly it gets registered in their mind. Though we can’t see any immediate results, it really gives fruitful results when used regularly over a period of time. It is one of the cheapest sources to teach your kid the alphabets. In dollar tree we get different types of flash cards on alphabets, numbers and shapes. You can do that by yourself as well. It is a fun activity for both the parent and child when you do it by yourself. Try to collect pictures for each alphabet from old magazines. Let your toddler select the picture he wants for each alphabet.

For toddlers, learning is not a strict time-based activity. We have to teach them through their play toys. Wooden board alphabet and number puzzle from Mellisa and Doug series form an ideal learning toy for a toddler. Don’t expect your child to be perfect at the first shot in solving the puzzle. Let them first explore with the shapes and size each alphabet/numbers. Help them fixing the shapes at the right place. Appreciate them when they do it right. Soon your kid will be a master in solving your Alphabet puzzle. There are different shapes available in this wooden board puzzle. Start with the bigger one. Once your kid is a master in that go for the tougher one. Kids get more interest in solving the puzzle games when they are nearing 3. Get them alphabet puzzles, so that they know what comes after each letter and so will be fun and interesting for them to solve.

Nowadays kids are more interested in playing with computer. Let them spend their time in the computer by learning through games. Some of the best learning websites for the toddlers who help in learning their numbers/alphabets are:

www.pbskids.org

www.cookie.com

www.starfall.com

Cookie.com helps in teaching your kid to write alphabets as well. Some of the programs like Super why? And Sesame Street in pbskids.org helps in letter recognition and phonetics awareness. When they are playing in these websites, just watch them play, but don’t interfere, let them explore by themselves. Help them only if they ask for it. But, one problem with this is they get addicted to these games very easily and it is tough to get them out of it.

If your toddler has a play date with their friends at your home, then plan for an alphabet treasure hunt game. Make cutouts of each alphabet and hide in some places at your home. Give each kid one alphabet and ask them to find it. It is really fun for them. If your kid is more familiar with alphabets, then try pushing them to next stage by asking them to find an object for each alphabet.

Your names are one best way to teach alphabets. The first letter of the names in the family becomes their alphabet. For example, if you are Adele then your alphabet is “A”, if you are “Jack”, then your letter is “J”, so on and so forth. If you assign particular alphabets to your family members, then it will be easy for your toddler to identify and remember that alphabet easily.

Nowadays there are more options for designing a kid’s room and especially most of the rooms have alphabets in it. Alphabet hooks are available to place it in any nook and corner of your house. You can decor your kids wall with an alphabet art or with big alphabet posters. If you are planning for a carpet for your kid’s room, then go in for one, which has alphabets or numbers. They will start identifying most of the alphabets in the carpet when they get familiarized.

When you go for a drive or a walk with your toddler ask them identify the alphabet letters they see in the hoarding or billboards or the buses. Even if they don’t respond, don’t worry, just teach them and keep playing. One fine day, you can see your kid identifying all the letters you used to ask in that path.

There are many creative ways to teach your toddlers the alphabets and numbers. But only thing you have to remember when you teach it to your kids is to make it a fun-filled experience. Never push learning on to them. Each child has a different learning ability and let them go on their own pace. They have a lifetime of learning ahead. This is the age for them to learn through play. So, let them enjoy. Just leave your comments before you go to prepare an alphabet soup for your toddler!