Help with letter
How To Help Your Child Learn The Alphabet
One of the first steps your child will take on their reading journey is learning to recognize letters. Before your young learner can start to sound out words, blend syllables together, or master other early reading foundations, they’ll need letter recognition skills.
Maybe you’re just getting started with letter recognition (or looking for some new ideas) and wondering about the best ways to practice with your child. Good news: HOMER is here to help!
Letter Recognition: Beginnings
When helping your child learn to recognize letters, it’s good to remember that all children have unique personalities, which means they have unique learning styles, too. This will help you and your child feel confident with their reading and learning development!
That being said, many children may express an interest in learning the alphabet by age two or three. This can manifest in a few different ways. If they have older siblings, your child may ask for “homework” to do while their siblings do theirs.
Around this age, your child may also notice the people around them reading books that look different than theirs. Instead of pictures, these books have lots of words. Your toddler may want to know how to read those “big” books, too!
Since your child likely isn’t enrolled in any sort of formal schooling yet, their initial interest in reading and letter recognition may be light and casual. This is great! There’s no need to rush into it.
But if you want to expand your child’s letter recognition skills or engage their interest more purposefully, stay tuned for tips on how to help your child learn the alphabet!
Tips For Encouraging Letter Recognition
Prioritizing letter recognition activities that are fun, simple, and engaging for your child is a great way to help them practice consistently and effectively.
There are many ways to introduce the alphabet to your child and help them learn letters or build their alphabetic skills if they’ve already started recognizing letters.
Here are some fun and easy ideas you can try from the comfort of your own home!
Read Alphabet Books
Although this technique may seem simple and common, it’s common for a reason — because it’s effective! And, as a bonus, you likely have several alphabet books around your home already.
Repeated exposure to the alphabet sets a strong foundation for your child to develop their letter recognition skills. Starting with the basics is essential to preparing them for more reading activities as they grow and develop.
Once your child is introduced to the basics, they can move on to more advanced beginning reading activities.
Touch And Feel Letters
Kids spend all day touching and exploring the world around them. Teaching your child letter sounds can be easier (and more fun for them!) when you engage skills that aren’t just visual or auditory.
Plus, let’s be honest — kids love to get messy! Letting them make a mess with letters offers them a great incentive to learn.
We recommend using anything you have around the house that is malleable enough to turn into letters. Shaving cream, pipe cleaners, PlayDoh, and popsicle sticks are all great options.
Play with your child as they build letters out of these materials (or swipe their fingers through a big pile of shaving cream!). If you want to go mess-free, you can also cut out letters from textured paper (like sandpaper).
Here’s how this method works:
- First, introduce the letter to your child. Trace or make the letter in whatever material you choose.
- Next, establish an association for your child. Ask your child to follow along while you draw the letter.
- Once your child has mastered following along with you, you can engage their recall skills. Draw a letter and ask them which one it is.
This activity might take a bit of time and practice, but don’t worry! You and your child will get there.
Explore Names Together
This activity can be effective and useful for helping your child learn letter recognition as well as the names of people on their sports teams, in their school classroom, or any other group of people.
If you want to try this with your child, write down a list of the names of the people in the group you’re focusing on. If it’s your first time doing this activity, consider starting with just your child’s immediate family to make it a bit easier.
Print the names on a large sheet of paper in a dark, easily readable color. Then ask your child to identify letters by saying something like, “Which name has an O in it?”
Change up the letter in question until you cover each name, and then help them tally up all of the letters they find!
To amp up the fun, make a game of seeing which letter appears the most times. You can even make bets beforehand (we suggest banking on a vowel). Whoever guesses which letter will appear most often gets a reward!
This activity helps reinforce two ideas to your child: first, it engages their letter recognition skills by exposing them to the alphabet repetitively.
Secondly, it helps them understand that the alphabet is a code made up of symbols (letters).
In order to learn how to read, they must learn how to recognize their letters first!
Create A Personalized Set Of Alphabet Cards
Similar to alphabet books, alphabet cards are an easy, reliable option to help your child learn letter recognition. And while there are many alphabet cards on the market, it’s way more fun to let your child make their own!
If you want to try this activity with your young learner, all you need are some large index cards (blank sheets of paper will work if you don’t have index cards) and lots of fun, decorative materials and supplies (glitter is our personal favorite)!
Simply have your child write one letter on each card and then color and decorate it. For younger children, you can also write the letter for them and let them spruce it up to their heart’s content!
This activity is amazing because it allows your child to make their learning highly personal and tailored to their specific interests.
By creating their own cards, your child will be able to exert some autonomy and independence over their learning goals.
It may help them become even more invested in their journey toward letter recognition!
Fill In The Dots
One challenge for children when it comes to recognizing letters is understanding what shapes letters are “made” of.
For example, the letter O is often taught as a letter that looks like a circle. Other letters are made up of curves, straight lines, dashes, and all sorts of shapes!
A helpful option for supporting your child’s efforts to recognize their letters is to break down the shapes that make up letters. This is where dot markers (or round stickers) can come in handy!
By utilizing a uniform shape — like a dot — to work through the alphabet, your child can begin to grasp the shape of letters both visually and physically. Understanding how letters are formed can help kids recognize letters more readily.
There are many free downloadable “dot letter” worksheets online that you can use for this exercise. But if you want to create them on your own, simply write out the alphabet in a large script, using empty circles to form the letters.
Your child can then follow along with stickers or dot markers and fill in the empty circles.
Letter Recognition As A Strong Foundation
At the end of the day, practicing letter recognition with your child is all about setting up a strong, solid foundation they can use to launch the rest of their reading and learning journey!
We hope these suggestions come in handy for helping to develop your child’s letter recognition skills. As your emerging reader learns to recognize letters, remember that every child is unique. What works for one may not work for another.
For those days when you need a little extra help, our online learning center is the perfect place to find safe, personalized, and effective activities for your child. Try our free onboarding quiz to get started!
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14 Letter Recognition Activities for Preschoolers
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Helping preschoolers to gain letter recognition skills does not need to feel like “work.
”
The best way to teach letter recognition is through play, in a fun, stress-free, and positive manner.
Here’s a brief intro to letter recognition, followed by 14 letter identifying activities.
What Letter Recognition Means
Learning letter recognition skills involves several different hands-on components.
Children need to distinguish the shapes of letters from each other (visually recognize them) and be able to point to and state the letter names, as well as the sounds made by each letter.
In addition, they must learn to form letters and write them.
These skills do not all need to be accomplished during the preschool years and in fact, preschoolers are not yet developmentally ready to learn to read and write.
By simply exposing children in a fun way, you will begin the process of laying down foundational pre-reading and writing skills.
When Should a Child Recognize Letters of the Alphabet?
Although you can read about average ages when kids gain alphabet skills, those often vary widely.
Just as children learn to walk and talk at different ages, the same is true for recognizing letters of the alphabet.
They each learn at their own pace, depending on many factors.
How to Build Skills to Prepare Children for Letter Recognition
Through fun play activities, parents can help their children gain various developmental skills that prepare preschoolers for letter identification.
Those types of skills include visual perception, memory and auditory perception.
What this means is that learning the letters does not in fact start with exposure to the actual letters, but rather to play activities that develop these skills.
Visual Perception
Visual perception refers to a child’s brain making sense of what their eyes are seeing, such as details and shapes (shape recognition).
These skills also include visual-motor and eye-hand coordination.
Helpful kinds of activities include:
- Those that exercise the large muscles (such as throwing/catching).
- Small motor activities (like lacing).
- Visual perception (such as building puzzles).
- Limiting screen time, which has limitations related to visual perception skills.
Memory
Memory development relates to storing and using information in the brain.
Stress-free activities to enhance these skills include:
- Simple card games
- Memory card games (get your own by downloading the FREE set of printables at the end of the post)
- Talking about fun memories
- Story visualization
- Reading and talking about books
- Visual memory games, like picture bingo
- Auditory memory games
Auditory Perception
Auditory perception includes the brain’s ability to distinguish sounds and words, which is important for learning the sounds of letters.
These are the kind of activities that can support this skill:
- Listening to music
- Distinguishing animal sounds
- Clapping out copied rhythm patterns
[source]
How to Teach Letter Recognition to Children
Even before children show an interest in print, these kinds of activities are meaningful and fun and will set the stage for letter recognition:
- Reading to them
- Sharing poems and nursery rhymes
- Talking to them
- Telling stories
- Singing songs to or with them
Keep it fresh, keep it new, and be willing to return to their favourite activities when asked.
As your children show a growing interest in print, make it available to them whenever possible.
Instead of keeping that book to yourself as you read to them, show children the words, running your fingers over them as you read. Let kids turn the pages of books.
Have books available in the home to which kids have constant access.
So many things around the house contain words, like packages, lists, letters, emails, screens, magazines, and greeting cards.
Point and touch as you read, showing children that you are using words daily, expressing how much can be learned through their use.
Write in front of your kids for all different purposes, at least sometimes spelling aloud.
Make drawing and writing tools and surfaces available to children at all times, indoors and out.
Don’t just offer the traditional papers and crayons – include:
- Drawing with sticks in the sand
- Writing on clay or playdough
- Drawing on shower and bath walls with soap
Should I Teach the Letters in a Specific Order?
Instead of teaching letters in any special, prescribed order, focus on those that are used most often and in order of importance for your children.
They typically want to know about the letters:
- In their names.
- In “MOM” and “DAD”.
- In a pet’s name.
- In environmental print (like on STOP or WALK signs).
- In outstanding words from a favourite storybook.
Think about and pay attention to those letters and words that appear to be interesting to your kids, using them as the foundation to build upon.
Then, when children are ready to formally learn the letters, teach them using sets of letters that make the most combinations of words, as explained in this article on teaching letters.
Is it Better to Teach Upper or Lowercase Letters First?
For preschoolers, the field of occupational therapy makes a good case for beginning with capitals in handwriting letter formation.
They are formed from larger lines and curves that avoid retracing and changing directions, while still teaching top to bottom strokes.
If children try to form letters for which their visual-motor skills are not prepared, they sometimes build poor habits that can be difficult to break later on.
Of course, your children may be familiar with lowercase letters, seeing them in many print formats, and gradually learning to identify them.
When their motor skills are ready, they typically make an easy switch to including them along with uppercase when they write.
[source]
Letter Recognition Activities and Games for Preschoolers
Here are some fun ways to teach letter recognition through play.
1. Point Out Environmental Print
Print is all around us.
Point out, talk about and stress the sounds of words on signs (such as favourite restaurants and traffic/street signs), cereal or other product boxes/labels, and familiar logos.
2. Share Rhyming Books
Read favourite rhyming books to your children, accentuating the rhyme and rhythm.
Afterwards, play an oral game of stating some rhyming words from the story and adding a new rhyming word of your own.
Challenge your kids to come up with more words that rhyme.
Either real or pretend “words” are okay, as it is the rhyming factor that counts.
3. Letter Hunt
Point out and talk about the letters in your child’s name, making them clearly visible in print.
Show them how you find one of those same letters in a magazine or newspaper and cut it out as a rather square piece (not necessarily trying to cut out close to the letter’s edges).
Challenge them to find other letters from their name in print and cut those out, as well.
After all the letters have been found, they can arrange them in the correct order for their name.
These may be kept in a small bag for future use or glued onto a coloured sheet of paper to post on the fridge or in your child’s room.
Instead of cutting, another option is to use different colours of highlighters to mark various letters found in print.
4. Play with Plastic/Wooden Letters
Letters may be sorted and put into piles in different ways:
- Those with curves
- Letters with straight lines
- Those from a child’s name or other important words
- Letters they can name
- Those for which they can say the sounds
Letters with magnets may be used on the fridge or on a magnet board for sorting purposes.
5. Bake Letters
Use bread or pretzel dough to form letters with your children, then bake them to be eaten later.
While you work, talk about the letter names, sounds, and easy words (like their names) that may be formed.
Special baking tins and cookie cutters may be purchased to bake letters. You can also bake oblong cakes and cut them into large letter shapes, as well.
6. Form Letters with Familiar Materials
Offer kids various types and colours of pasta to form letters on flat backgrounds, either to glue into place or to leave loose and rearrange into different letters.
Other materials to explore might include:
- Dry breakfast cereals
- Buttons or pennies
- Cotton balls
- Dried beans
- Mini-marshmallows
- Toothpicks
- Rice
- Yarn
7. Form Letters with Unusual Materials
Using a tabletop or oblong baking pan with low sides, spread shaving cream or pudding for children to trace letters into with their fingers.
The same may be done with sand (or moved outside), to trace in with fingers or safe “sticks,” like pencils, dowels, or rulers.
8. Go on a Scavenger Hunt
Have children choose a letter card or cutout. Talk about how the letter looks and sounds.
Depending on children’s level of development, challenge them to find things around the house that have that letter printed on them or objects that begin with that letter’s sound.
9. Fish for Letters
Magnetic letter fishing games may be purchased or made with paper, magnets, paper clips, dowels, and string.
Name or pick a letter, focusing on how it looks and/or sounds. Kids then “fish” for the matching letters from the “pond.”
They can also just fish for a random letter and then name it once it is “caught.”
You can also use a version of this game later on, when children are learning to match upper and lowercase letters.
10. Play Musical Chairs with Letters
Add paper plates with letters or letters cut from cardboard right onto the chairs or onto the floor beneath.
Children walk around the circle and find a place to sit when the music stops. They each then name the letter on their chair or floor directly beneath.
11. Find Letters on a Keyboard
Make use of an old computer keyboard or typewriter. Get kids to name the letters as they touch the keys.
They can also find them to press as you say the names, sounds, or hold up cards, one letter at a time.
12. Spray or Write Letters Outdoors
Offer spray bottles with water for children to spray letters on driveways, sidewalks, or even the side of your house.
Another option is to use sidewalk chalk to write letters on the driveway, patio, or basketball court.
13. Form Letters with Bendable Materials
Get your children to bend pipe cleaners, chenille stems, or products like Wikki Stix (string covered in wax) to form letters.
Children often like to make multiple letters and form words, as well.
14. Find the Hidden Letters
“Bury” plastic or wooden letters in a sand table or sand box.
Ask children to name the letters as they are discovered.
Other materials may be used as alternates in sand tables or large trays, such as coloured rice, pasta, dried beans, or birdseed.
All of these ideas for teaching letter recognition can help to strengthen a child’s early literacy skills.
Pay attention to where they stand in their development and keep raising the bar just a bit higher, while still returning to those games and activities in which they feel a high measure of success.
This is the key to learning.
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Help with the letter. Module (Module) 5a No. 2. GDZ English Spotlight Grade 6 Vaulina. – Rambler/class
Help with the letter. Module (Module) 5a No. 2. GDZ English Spotlight Grade 6 Vaulina. – Rambler/classInteresting questions
School
Tell me how to deal with the rude attitude of classmates towards my child?
News
Could you tell us how much you spent on preparing your child for the school year?
School
Explain, is it true that parents will now be informed about the decline in school performance? nine0003
School
When is the main period of the USE scheduled for 2018?
News
Will the system of checking and organizing final essays be somehow improved?
Universities
Tell me, why did they close the admission to the Moscow Institute of Television and Radio Broadcasting "Ostankino"?
a) Look at the heading of the email.
Who's sending it to whom? What is the email about?
b) Read the email and put the paragraphs in the right order. nine0029
replies
a) Look at the email header. Who sends it to whom
? What is this letter about?
Answer: Rosa is writing to Lizzie; The e-mail is about New Year's Eve
b) Read the e-mail and put the paragraphs in the correct
order. Listen and check.
Answer: C - 1 B - 2 A - 3
From Rose
To Lizzy
Subject - Happy Holidays!
Dear Lizzy!
A) How about you? How do you spend New Year's Eve? What would you
did not, have fun. I wish you and your family a happy
New Year.
B) We are very busy at the moment. Dad is doing his last shopping.
Mom cooks a special dish, fried little eels. They are very
delicious, honestly. Aunt Betsy makes tea for everyone, and Grandma does the gardening. Clara and Steve are washing the dishes. Steve is also washing the grapes for the evening.
In
Spain, it is good luck to eat 12 grapes at midnight on New Year's Eve
. As for the twins, they make jewelry. They are engrossed. nine0029 The Spaniards call New Year's Eve - Nochevieja, which means the old
night. This is because December 31st is the last night of the old year.
C) How are things in New York? I hope the weather is not too cold. Here
in Madrid everyone is getting ready to celebrate the New Year. The shops are full of people. People
buy gifts and food. Municipal workers are decorating the streets and
are making preparations for today's celebration in Pasa del Sol.
Good day Rose
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"Please help me." Khovansky wrote an open letter about false witnesses and the threats of the investigator - Baza.io
Yuri Khovansky has been in jail since June. The blogger is accused of justifying terrorism because of the song about Nord-Ost, which he performed in 2012 on the stream. The court refused to send Khovansky under house arrest, because, according to the investigation, he has deep knowledge of IT and can "remotely destroy information on electronic media" during the collection of evidence. nine0003
Now Maria Nelyubova, Yuri's girlfriend, has published his open letter. It follows from it that Khovansky even theoretically has nothing to “destroy” – the Investigative Committee, it seems, has no evidence against the blogger.
We publish Khovansky's letter without abbreviations.
This is an open letter to all the media, bloggers and just people who care about my fate. My name is Yury Khovansky, and I have been in jail for half a year on charges of justifying terrorism. Nine years ago, in 2012, I made an immoral and stupid joke when I sang the song for which I am now behind bars. nine0003
During these nine years, I repeatedly repented, apologized, and made charitable donations to the Terrorist Victims Fund. There is no moral justification for my act, but the statute of limitations has expired on this offense. Article 205.2 and 2, in the form in which it is presented to me, appeared only in 2016. This is well known to me, to you and to the investigators of the State Investigation Department, who keep me in a pre-trial detention center, prolonging my arrest month after month.
I was ready to endure and answer for my song according to the law, but what is happening to me does not fall under the definition of legality.
Despite the fact that the whole country knows that I sang that song in 2012, the investigation refuses to accept evidence of this, because they understand that they will have to let me go, and they cannot allow this. As a result, instead of investigating the crime, the investigators simply moved the time of the action to 2018, recruiting fake witnesses. nine0003
Screenshot: t.me/freehovan
Four city lunatics testified that they witnessed my performance of this song and it was in 2018. Their testimonies are ridiculous, but when I read them, I didn't feel like laughing - I wanted to cry. The court accepted this testimony - the judge did not even raise an eyebrow when he read this nonsense. At the same time, all the numerous evidence of the defense that the song was in 2012 is simply ignored. On one side of the scale - notarized facts, on the other - the testimony of people who do not know what "stream" is. All four witnesses, oddly enough, are from St. Petersburg, which is very convenient for the local GSU.
nine0003
I was hoping that I would be able to challenge this in court on the merits, but recently the head of the investigation team in my case came to me in the pre-trial detention center and did not notify my lawyers, he came secretly and put forward conditions for me:
1) I have to testify that sang that song in 2018.
2) I have to give up my lawyers.
3) I must take their lawyer.
If I fulfill these conditions, they will stop appointing endless examinations, they will take the case to court, where I will receive a fine and go free. If I refuse these conditions, everything will be framed as if I "went into denial", and they will give me a real prison term. I already once believed this investigator - he promised to let me go on my own recognizance if I testified at the very beginning and did not take Article 51. I told him that I didn't trust him anymore and I wasn't going to confess to something I didn't do. nine0003
Screenshot: t.me/freehovan
In response, he gave me two days to think it over and said that in case of refusal, not only I would have problems, but also Masha, my beloved.
Prior to this, the opera had already threatened me to plant drugs on her if she did not withdraw the complaint. Two days later, the investigator sent my computers for examination, although they had already been examined, and not at the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, but at the FSB. My lawyers still cannot get a copy of the decision on the appointment of this examination - they are simply denied. The investigator also forbade lawyers to be present with me during the investigative action - this is an unheard of violation of my constitutional rights: people in crosses do not believe that this is even possible. But now I know that with such people in the Investigative Committee, everything is possible. nine0003
I'm scared and don't know what to do. I used to be afraid in a pre-trial detention center, but I have never had to be afraid for my loved ones on the other side of the fence. I didn’t think that in Russia in 2021, the investigator could openly threaten the family of the accused and demand to confess to something he didn’t do.
It's not the 37th year in the yard, I thought. Now I don't know what to think anymore. I beg, no, I beg - help me.
Don't let them harm my family. Don't let them plant something on the computer or put me in jail on the testimony of perjurers! After all, the law must be observed even in relation to those who you do not like. I was not the best person in the wild, but is that a reason to justify the methods of the NKVD that are applied to me? nine0003
Just think, I have 4.5 m million subscribers, and it took the Investigative Committee only four false witnesses to break my life. How long will it take them to break yours? Every third person in the "Crosses" sits solely on the "testimony" of such "witnesses". It could be your husband, your brother, your son. Now not just my fate is being decided, now the scope of permissiveness, which the investigating authorities allow themselves, is being determined. After all, anyone can go to the web archive and see that I sang that song in 2012.
