Toddlers learning alphabet

Learning the Alphabet: Best Activities for the ABCs

PLAY. OF COURSE! As much as we might think adults need to have a big hand and push into kids learning the alphabet, that’s just not always the case: Kids learn the alphabet when they play with it.

No stressing needed in the early years.

RELATED: Looking for a year’s worth of learning all done for you? Check out Playing Preschool.

By letting them play with it. Kids need exposure to it – the same way they have exposure to animals, dolls, cars, trucks, numbers, and blocks.

The truth is: memorizing letter names is just that, memorizing. While it may seem super fancy, memorizing letter names is no different than memorizing dinosaur names, color words, princesses, and Paw Patrol characters.

It’s memorizing the name of a symbol.

The difference is, parents have been told that memorizing the ABCs is the key to learning success. That’s just not true.

Learning in the early years shouldn’t be relegated to just memorizing. The early years is for learning to problem solve, communicate, critical think, to ask question, to take risks, to develop life long skills… and they develop all these through PLAY.

It all comes back to PLAY.

Our children see animals everywhere, and we encourage them to learn names and sounds as they do.

“That’s a cow. It says mooooo.”

Letters are no different. We are asking a child to memorize the name and the sound it makes.

“That’s an M. It says mmmmm.”

We don’t build up animal names. We don’t worry about animal names. We don’t buy flashcards to help memorize names and sounds faster.

But we do with letters.

We don’t need to.

Just like we don’t push animals, or construction trucks, or dinosaur names on little kids if they aren’t interested… follow the same rule with letters.

But if you DO HAVE A CHILD INTERESTED IN LETTERS, play with them. Answer questions. Be casual. Be cool. It’ll happen.

Remember, kids are expected to learn the alphabet IN KINDERGARTEN (that’s what the Common Core State Standards say).

Here’s some of our greatest hits from through the years that helped my kids learn their letters bit by bit.

Nothing fancy. Just play and fun, light and breezy.

A combination literacy + sensory + life skills activity that can’t be beat. A good set of alphabet magnets (like the ones here) are a must!

Identifying capital letters and their small letter counterparts is a big deal… but it’s also similar to kids recognizing several breeds of bears or that Great Danes and Poodles are both dogs.

It’s another skill that grows over time.

A little art + letter recognition here, and this activity uses alphabet magnets too. They’re an important toy/supply to keep on hand!

The tag line is right here: all these supplies came from the Dollar Store! The Dollar Store is a GREAT place to find activity supplies.

I spy alphabet magnets again!!! This is a FUN activity for littles – because it’s a color sorting activity that uses alphabet pieces as the materials. My son (in this photo) didn’t know his ABCs yet, but he had a ball playing with them.

Always a favorite! This is a MATCHING activity – and my daughter had a ball trying to put her letters back in alphabetical order.

Grab your toilet tube collection and your dot stickers. This is a great (and portable!) activity for kids.

A classic here. This has been on repeat since 2016 and we play it ALL THE TIME. It’s part letters, part gross motor, and one of the greatest “sittervising” activities of my life.

An activity that focuses on “tricky letters.” This activity is for all those letters that look different in capital vs lower case form. Ss and Cc are easy letters. Ee and Gg? Tricky letters.

Hello to one of my favorite activities and favorite TRICKS. Yes, that sharpie really does come off. And everyone say hi to my alphabet magnets yet again…

I can still remember the first time we did this! Feels like yesterday so you know that makes me feel OLD. It’s a classic for a reason… and the reason I got so many dinners made with 3 under 4.

Look at this cutie unwrapping his puzzle pieces. What kid doesn’t love opening a present? 26 alphabet puzzle pieces is one mighty fine way to play with the ABCs.

Featuring one of my favorite alphabet toys: the foam bath letters. Not just for the bath, and totally awesome to play with. We still have a set of these!

You don’t need to drill the alphabet.

You don’t need to stress about the alphabet.

Have some alphabet toys and have some fun… and keep remember: they learned their animal names and sounds just fine. This will happen too.

14+ Simple Activities to Teach Toddlers the Alphabet

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Learning the ABCs is the foundation of reading and writing and something that you’ll want to start teaching your child early on.

Teaching toddlers the alphabet can often seem like a daunting task because you’ll want to create a strong foundation to build on for higher level skills.

The last thing you want to do is make letter learning stressful or frustrating. The goal is not to have them just memorize the letters and spit them back out, but to interact and grow from what they are learning now.

When Should You Start Teaching Your Toddlers the Alphabet?

The good news is that little ones are like sponges and they love to learn!

Your toddler may begin to recite the alphabet from memory by learning the ABC song closer to 18 months old, but recognizing and identifying the actual letters is a skill that may come later on. 

You can start teaching toddlers the alphabet around age 2, but can even begin earlier than that.

Now that’s not to say that at two years old your child will know their whole alphabet. Two is simply the age that they can recognize a letter here and there.

Don’t overwhelm your child by showing them the entire alphabet at once. Work on one letter at a time and your toddler should pick it up quickly.

How to Teach Toddlers the Alphabet

Children typically start recognizing the letters in their own name first and then recognize all other letters after that.

Be sure to have your child look at both uppercase and lowercase letters when learning. Most children are taught all of the uppercase letters first, however, the lowers case letters are the ones that they will see more often when they read or see words.

Incorporating the Alphabet in Everyday Activities

One of the best things about teaching toddlers the alphabet is that you can include simple activities throughout the day. Some of my favorite ways to do this are:

Board Books

If you aren’t already, reading to your children is so important and great for development. Exposing them to books helps them start to recognize letters.

Any and all books provide so much benefit for recognizing letters as your child gets older, but board books with large letters are best for teaching toddlers the alphabet. This book allows your toddler to trace the letters with their fingers and lift-the-flap fun to help with letter learning.

ABC Toys

There are lots of different toys out there that help children learn their alphabet. Try finding toys like these letter matching puzzles that have your child match the shape of the letter.

Magnetic letters are also great. You can have them on the refrigerator so when you are cooking they can play with the letters. 

Related Post: 20 Important Things to Teach Your 2 Year Old

Name Learning Recognition

Writing your little one’s name out large on a piece of paper and going over each letter is a great way to help them recognize the letters in their name. You can have them trace the letters in different colors to make a “rainbow name” activity. 

These name puzzles from Bloom Owl are a great way to get your child learning the letters of their name. They’ll love playing with the puzzle as they start to recognize the letters they see all the time. 

Sing the ABC song

Singing the ABC song is a great way to help your toddler learn the sequence of the alphabet. When doing an activity like letter recognition, you can sing the song and point to the letter at the same time helping them to recognize the letter name with the letter shape.  

Workbooks and Printable Worksheets

Workbooks and worksheets are great tools to help children learn the alphabet and teach them what letters look like. Even if they aren’t quite able to trace yet, exposing them to the letters is still a great idea.

Letter Shows

By far the easiest resource for having your child learning letters and letter sounds is the Leap Frog shows on Netflix. They include Letter Factory, Phonics Farm, and more. If you have Netflix you can access these shows! My 20 month year old was reciting all of the letter sounds because he loves this show so much!

Games and Activities for Teaching the Alphabet

Since toddlers learn through play and exploration of their environment, they understand best when taking a hands-on approach to learning. Finding fun games and activities is a great way to teach toddlers the alphabet by making it an engaging learning experience.

Every child also has their own style when it comes to absorbing new information. Some children may learn best while jumping up and down, feeling objects with their fingers, or listening to a song.

Here are a few games and activities that incorporate sensory modalities to build on letter learning. They don’t involve actually writing letters, so they’re great for young toddlers as you teach them the alphabet.

Related Post: 31 Things That You Can Teach Your 3 Year Old

This activity is great for toddlers because it helps them to interact with letters and have fun. You can help them by asking them what letter they found and then associating the sound the letter makes.

Writing Let

Writing letters with shaving cream is one of the ways my mom helped me learn letters as a child. I remember having so much fun writing with shaving cream.

Bury some letters in rice (beans would work too!) and have your toddler find them. This is a great way to engage them with play and also help them learn to match up their letters. Another way you can change this up would be to have them match uppercase to lowercase and vice versa.

Feed the alphabet monster is a fun and silly way to help teach toddlers the alphabet. You can leave the letters in order to start and then, later on, scramble them up. Another way to make this game a little more complex would be to have an uppercase and lowercase version of each letter.

Related Post: 10 Clever Ways to Teach Your Toddler How to Share

I love this game for teaching toddlers the alphabet! I think it is adorable and functional. You can help your toddler associate words with each letter like “A for apple” or “B for bear”. As they become more proficient, you can ask them to say a word that starts with the letter they picked up.

Dry Erase Letter Erasing

This is a multi-sensory activity using a dry erase board and dry erase marker or eraser to help your child learn to recognize letters. Tell them that you will tell them a letter to find. Then they must locate it on the board and erase it. This is great for little ones who don’t have control of writing actual strokes.

Teaching toddlers the alphabet doesn’t have to be complicated and learning through play is a great way to build a strong foundation for letter recognition. There are so many simple everyday activities that you can do to help them learn.

The best part is when you teach your older children the alphabet, they can help your younger children learn too!

I hope that you found some practical ways to incorporate teaching toddlers the alphabet in your everyday activities and some fun games to play!

Related posts:

How to teach a child the alphabet. Interesting techniques and tips

How to teach a child the alphabet as early as possible? How to get a child interested in learning? What teaching aids are better: primers, alphabet, cards with letters, games? What if the child does not want to learn letters? And many other questions about teaching a child the letters of the Russian alphabet were told by the teacher of the children's development center. Parents are looking for newfangled methods, trying to figure out how to teach their child letters successfully and quickly, however, this does not always lead to the expected effect. In order for the process of teaching children the alphabet to go smoothly, you need to take into account the following points related to their psychology and physiology - the age at which it is better to start learning and the characteristics of children's thinking. When is it better to start learning the alphabet The physiology of young children is such that it is difficult for them to concentrate on one lesson for more than 10-15 minutes. Therefore, at the age of 1-2 years, it makes no sense to engage in a targeted study of the alphabet, in the form in which it is necessary for further learning to read. Moreover, by trying to force the baby to remember the letters by force, you risk causing him a negative reaction to the process of learning the alphabet, thereby turning him away from further studies. Remember that it is impossible to force children to learn the alphabet, it is desirable to interest them in this, then they will react favorably to the classes.

It is also important to understand that there are no clear age limits within which a child should start learning the alphabet. For some children, this will go away “with a bang” already at the age of 2 years, for others, even at 3 years old, memorizing the alphabet will be difficult. You can start learning letters if the child:
1) easily concentrates during developmental activities;
2) has a good visual memory;
3) loves to have books read to him, likes to look at them on his own. Start learning letters with your child, for starters, exclusively in a playful way. Benefits in the study of the alphabet Of course, the main assistants in this difficult but interesting business will be the primer and the alphabet.

Exploring how these manuals differ.
1) A primer is a textbook that not only depicts letters, but also outlines methods for teaching reading, but also contains recommendations for parents on how to better learn the alphabet and conduct classes.
2) ABC is a series of manuals representing the letters of the alphabet in any variant. These can be cubes with images of letters, cards, lotto, stickers, various kinds of puzzles, sets of letters on magnets.
3) Standing apart in this series are poetic alphabets - when a letter, its sound or image is played out in poetic form. The most pleasant for the perception of young children are the poetic collections of S.Ya. Marshak and A. A. Usachev. Methods There are several popular methods on how to learn the letters of the Russian alphabet correctly, each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let's look at them in more detail. The method of memorizing letters by images The essence of the method: One of the popular methods that many parents prefer is teaching the alphabet as follows: the child is invited to learn and remember a letter, fixing its perception with an image of an object that begins with this letter. Example: "A" in most cases suggests a watermelon drawn next to it, "D" - a house, "P" - a fish, and so on. This is not entirely correct, and here's why. Cons: Parents often complain that as a result, the child remembers not the pronunciation of a single letter, but the entire visual chain - that is, his “A” is a watermelon. And at
Further, when asked to show “A”, the child points to a watermelon, and when you ask him what letter it is, he answers - “watermelon”. Tip: Therefore, professional educators recommend using such alphabets or cards, only at the initial stage - at the age of 2-3 years, in order to interest children in learning the alphabet itself.

Bakhtina's interesting method Recently, the method of E. Bakhtina, a teacher and author of the primer of the same name, has become very popular in teaching children the alphabet and reading. The essence of the technique: E. Bakhtina suggests learning the alphabet in the following way: to assign to each letter its specific image, the association that the baby will have when he sees it. So, for example, “A” may be associated in a child with the sound that small children make when they still can’t speak. E. Bakhtina suggests taking advantage of the fact that the outlines of many letters can be supported by an analogy with images of objects already familiar to the baby. Example: A hippopotamus with a big belly, very similar to the image "B", "U" is very reminiscent of a snail carrying a house on its back, and "E" and "Yo" differ from each other in that "E" has "eyes" closed and they are not visible, but for "Yo" they are open.
Disadvantages: It must be said that the study of letters using this method requires a sufficiently developed associative thinking, and this is not necessarily characteristic of every child. Pros: E. Bakhtina is popular, since the process of learning the alphabet is set out in it clearly and consistently, which allows it to be used not only by professional teachers, but also by parents on their own.

Basic recommendations for learning letters according to the classical method In order to better understand how to teach a child letters, you can use the following recommendations:
1) Make cards with the image of all the letters of the alphabet, it is desirable that the cards show nothing more than the letter itself, while it should be bright and colorful, on a light background. Attach cards as you study over the child's work table, or on the wall of his playroom, thus training his visual memory.
2) It will be easier to learn the simplest vowels "A", "O", "U", "I" at the initial stage, so start learning with them. Pronounce them correctly, as if "singing". In the future, this will greatly help when you teach the child to compose syllables.
3) It is necessary to teach the child not to pronounce the name of the letter - “EM”, “ES”, “ZHE”, but its pronunciation, the sound “MMMM”, “SS”, “LJ”.
4) Start studying consonants with "B", "P", "M", "N", "T", "G", "K". Pinching consonants "H", "Shch", "Shch" are best learned last, especially if their pronunciation causes difficulties for the baby.
5) Don't rush! If your child has trouble remembering certain letters, take a break. Come back to them after a while.
6) We study letters not only when you study at home, but also on the street, while walking. Invite the young student to recognize already familiar letters on signs, in store names. Learning letters with pleasure Classes for teaching young children something should be done with pleasure, in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Try to diversify the study of the alphabet by reading poetic alphabets, guessing riddles, memorizing rhymes and tongue twisters. Do not rush to teach the baby to write, for a start it is necessary that he successfully memorize all the letters, be able to call them quickly and without difficulty, and only after that you can begin to teach the child to write letters. For a full and effective teaching of writing, you will need special aids - copybooks with letters.

3 best online games for learning the alphabet for children

A lot depends on how pleasant and comfortable it will be for a baby to get acquainted with letters, including the strength of desire in the future to pick up books, read, reach for knowledge, make discoveries. Not all adults have the time, talent and patience to acquaint a child with letters, teach him to read, but today this has ceased to be a problem - you can call on the best games for learning the alphabet to help.

We've reviewed dozens of letter learning apps and selected the top three. To make our review really useful for you, we included primary school teachers, children from 3 to 6 years old, as well as their parents in the research group. Here's what we got:

When choosing, we recommend focusing on the tastes and preferences of your child - let the baby play each of the applications presented, and he will choose the game that he finds most interesting for himself.

Editor's Choice

• Readings - This is a whole world in which the child plunges headlong: 40 fabulous locations, 35 mini-games, original music and watercolor illustrations.
• Speaking alphabet - Interactive alphabet, plasticine animation, two learning modes - sounds and letters.
• Learning letters is fun for kids! - Another interesting application that offers several game scenarios for memorizing letters. The kid will have to color "smart" pictures, look for objects with a certain letter, listen to rhymes.

1. "Readings" - application, which will teach your child to read

Here is what the well-known user resource Lifehacker writes about Reading:

• “Readings is a sequential learning game. It is simple and clear drawn, as well as easy to manage. The game has a story that captivates the child even more. Sound accompaniment also helps: letters, warehouses and words are pronounced, they are easy to perceive by ear.

And here are the words of the General Director of N. Zaitsev Methods LLC Andreev E.V.

• “Readings is an application that will serve as a good addition to learning with Zaitsev's Cubes. We recommend it to those who want to teach a child to read without coercion and stress.”

We will complete:

Reading is not just an exciting game for learning the alphabet, it is a whole fairy-tale world that opens up to a child. You don't have to offer the kid to play Reading every time - the child himself will ask to turn on the fairy tale. The interface is so simple and clear that the participation of parents is practically not required - except at first. Watercolor graphics, dozens of different locations and tasks: every day something new and interesting awaits the child - a real fairy tale that not only tells about miracles, but also teaches the child a unique magical skill, because those who can read are able to manage time, and travel to different worlds.

Readings are:

• Watercolor graphics, beautiful music, elaborate fairy tale scenario. You definitely won't be bored;
• Total immersion effect. This effect is supported not only by the children's voice acting of the main characters - no falsehood, pretense, but the main thing here is that the child is actively involved in the fairy tale. The further development of the plot depends on him - and this is a certain responsibility that contributes to greater composure, and hence the effectiveness of training;
• Zaitsev's method. To date, this technique is recognized by many experts as the best among all existing ones - learning to read comes smoothly, easily, efficiently. Reading is built on this particular technique, the game moves from simple to complex, which allows the child to believe in himself and practice;
• The variety of tasks is another undoubted advantage of Reading. It will not be boring. In addition, the tasks are arranged in such a way that children with any peculiarities of perception memorize letters well and put them into words. For example, all letters are voiced, so phonemic hearing develops in the process.

Would you like to learn more about Reading? We invite you to watch a short video:

Beware, you can quickly fall in love with this game - you won't have time to look back, but the child is already reading. Parents are also encouraged to periodically look at the Reading blog - news about the application appears here regularly, as well as useful tips and tricks on raising and educating children.

2. "Talking alphabet" - an interactive alphabet, made with love and care.

The main advantages of the game:

• Beautiful graphics and music, cute animals;
• Simple interface. Even a three-year-old child will quickly figure out what's what;
• All letters are spoken. The child is constantly offered to enter into a dialogue.

Of the minuses, one can only single out a small number of games (there are only six of them) and the lack of a plot that runs like a red thread from beginning to end. In fact, it's just an interactive alphabet - yes, interesting, fun. But the child will not have an unbridled desire to return to it again and again - each game is independent, and after its completion there are no unfinished business.

Would you like to get to know the ABC better? See:

Rounding out our review is an educational game. Learning letters is fun for kids. A simple application that preschool children will quickly figure out: cute animation, funny melodies, the ability to learn letters and sounds - it's all captivating and interesting.

By choosing Learn Letters Fun for Kids, you get a game that:

• Will surely interest your child: graphics and music attract and hold attention;
• Offers various tasks for memorizing letters. For example, three objects and three letters appear on the screen, with which the names of objects begin - you need to correlate the letter and the object;
• Does not require the intervention and presence of parents - the interface is as simple and clear as possible.

But, as in the case of the Talking ABC, there is no single plot that would lead the child from the first stage to the last. Why is this story so important? Because it forms in the child a steady desire to return to the game again and again - he still has unfinished business there.

You can see a little more here:

Important questions about learning to read

No specialist can give you an unambiguous answer to this question - all children develop differently, so you should focus not on age, but on the child's readiness for learning. But there are still certain norms, and they are dictated by common sense: if your child goes to first grade already knowing the letters, or better, knowing how to read, it will be easier for him to adapt to school. We will talk about how to determine the best moment to start learning letters, learning to read, below.

Many parents send their kids to special circles where children are taught to read, count, draw and so on from an early age. Zaitsev's cubes, the Montessori method, mental arithmetic, and so on are used. We will not say that this is the wrong approach - the benefits of such circles are undeniable (if competent teachers teach there). But the problem is that such classes are held once or twice a week for an hour. This is not enough. If you want your child to develop faster, you need to deal with him more often, not necessarily by the hour. It is worth focusing on the mood of the child, on his desires. And there are many scenarios of situational games - look for certain letters on car numbers or signs while walking, remember the names of objects with a specific letter, or, conversely, name the first letters of the objects that surround you.

If you have the opportunity to take your child to special early development clubs, great. If you have the opportunity to regularly engage with the child on your own - great. But if you do not have such opportunities, you can always take advantage of the fruits of technological progress - special game applications that will captivate the child, help him learn the letters, start reading. And most importantly, they will awaken in the kid an interest in learning, and in the future you will remember them with a kind word many times.

Of course, not all applications are worthy of your attention - some are uninteresting, some are ineffective, some are too difficult for preschoolers. So that you do not waste your time, nerve cells, we have compiled for you the top 3 best games for learning the alphabet: compare, evaluate, play. But first, let's talk about what every parent of a preschooler needs to know.

Learning to read: problems and solutions

The most important thing is to determine when the child is ready to learn. Attempts to introduce the baby to letters too early may fail - the child will not only not learn what is required of him, but will lose confidence in his abilities, lose interest in learning in general.

How to understand that the baby is already ready to get acquainted with the letters?

• He understands what others are saying to him. It is better if he understands not just words, but whole sentences.
• The baby has a fairly rich vocabulary. The more words a child knows, the easier it will be for him to read.
• The child must correctly build sentences, have good pronunciation. This item should not be considered as a mandatory criterion - it is difficult to expect a perfectly delivered speech from a preschooler, but the baby should speak confidently enough, and you should understand him well.

How to make your child's acquaintance with letters as comfortable and effective as possible?

There are certain rules that will allow you to make the learning process pleasant and comfortable for the child, respectively, increase the effectiveness of classes:

• Exercise regularly and in small amounts. Young children are not able to concentrate on one activity for a long time, especially if this activity requires perseverance and constant attention. But five minutes of practice is better than nothing. And if there are 5-7 such training sessions per day? You will get a full-fledged lesson - which will be useful, while not causing rejection in the child. On the other hand, if the kid likes it, if he is carried away, you should not tear him away from the “lesson” - this often happens if the lessons are presented in a playful way;
• Do not scold the child for failures in the learning process, but on the contrary, praise more often. Do not take the failure of the baby as a consequence of laziness and negligence. In fact, learning to read is difficult - adults do it automatically, and the child has to correlate the letter with the sound, combine sounds, memorize syllables, add them, understand the meaning of each word, and then each sentence, text. This really requires maximum concentration, and also experience - which the child does not have. Therefore, notice even small successes, this will motivate the baby. If you feel that you are ready to break loose and make a remark, stop the lesson, get distracted, return to the letters a little later, when you are in a good mood;
• Read books aloud and discuss what you read. Reading aloud allows you to expand the vocabulary of children, which can then be a great help in learning to read. In addition, a child will be able to understand from a very early age that different worlds are hidden behind different books - interesting, fascinating, incredible. And once the desire to get into these worlds on their own, regardless of adults, will become so strong that the child himself will take a book and begin to try to read. Do not forget to discuss what you have read - ask your child questions that he is able to understand at his age and which he can answer.

And one more thing. Do not rush to do everything at once. Go from simple to complex. First, let the child get acquainted with the letters and sounds. Then syllables can be made from sounds, then short words. And only when all these steps are successfully completed, you can proceed to reading longer and more complex words.

In order to best prepare yourself for the process of teaching your child to read, we advise you to read our article "How to teach your child to read".

Different methods of teaching reading

There are different methods of teaching reading. And there are no unambiguously bad and good, senseless and effective - when choosing a technique, you should focus on the child: on his age, character, perseverance, his preferences. It is also worth sensibly assessing your capabilities - if you are not ready to regularly engage with your child on your own, you should not choose methods that require your vigilant attention and control.

warehouse reading

Warehouse reading. We are talking about the Zaitsev technique, which is very popular today. Although in fact, learning to read through warehouses was practiced in Rus'. The essence of the method is to forget for a while about letters and attempts to divide words into syllables, which can be short and long, simple and complex. Warehouses are either two or one letter: a consonant and a vowel, a vowel and a consonant, a consonant with a soft or hard sign, or a separate vowel and a consonant letter. Education is supposed to be through cubes, on the sides of which warehouses are written. The cubes are different - in size, color, content, this is done so that the child understands the difference between vowels and consonants, voiced and soft, between different types of warehouses. An undoubted plus of the technique is the playful form and a soft transition from simple to complex.

Syllabic reading

N.S. Zhukova's methodology, on the basis of which the primer was created. This method of teaching reading was used by the Romans. In Zhukova's primer, a system has been built in which sounds with letters are gradually introduced into speech. At the initial stage, the concept of a syllable is introduced, so that the child learns to read together more quickly.

Sound analytical-synthetic teaching methodology

A method that is now actively used in kindergartens and schools in our country. The technique was developed by A.I. Voskresenskaya, a Soviet methodologist and teacher of the Russian language. Voskresenskaya created a unique order in which children learn sounds and letters. First, kids learn letters that add up to simple syllables and words, then the complexity increases. It turns out that at first children learn syllables of two letters and simple words of two syllables. Then the children get acquainted with the syllables of three letters, where the vowel is in the center. After that, the two stages are combined and the children learn to read words from the studied syllables. Further, words of three syllables and six letters are studied, and then incrementally.

The role of applications in teaching reading

Just a few decades ago, all options for teaching children to read required patience, tact, and pedagogical skills from adults. And a lot of time. Today, games for learning the alphabet and reading can be called to help.

These applications have many advantages:

• Education in the form of a game. This means that the child's interest will be maintained at a high level, which means that you can count on the high efficiency of classes;
• The ability to devote any free time to learning. Remember, we wrote above that it is important to exercise little by little, but regularly - special applications provide excellent conditions for complying with this principle. Got a free minute? Play and learn;
• Competent construction of the training program, from simple to complex. Scenario development often involves teachers, speech therapists and other specialists who help make games not only interesting for kids, but also as useful as possible. The child effortlessly gets acquainted with the letters, while he does not have to face unsolvable puzzles, the complexity gradually increases as the child's skills are fixed.

The application will not lose patience when the child makes the tenth mistake. It will be ready to play with your baby anytime, anywhere, for as long as you need. It will always praise for success and give something as a reward. With its help, the child will get acquainted with letters, sounds, learn to put them into syllables or warehouses, then into words and sentences.

Of course, all of the above applies only to high-quality applications developed by professionals in the field of child psychology and pedagogy. Unfortunately, there are not only useful and interesting games in the public domain, but also those that can be frankly harmful - capable of discouraging a child from learning for a long time. Therefore, the choice of educational applications should be approached as carefully and responsibly as possible.

You can, for example, listen to the recommendations of Roskachestvo and evaluate factors such as:

• The presence or absence of advertising, the imposition of in-app purchases. If every five minutes the child has to interrupt for commercials, the game is unlikely to be useful;
• Easy settings. The interface should be as simple as possible for a preschooler. Instructions for use will also not be superfluous - for parents so that they can familiarize themselves and, if necessary, tell the child what to do and how;
• Data on teaching methods. It's good when the game is built on the same teaching methodology that you use with your child. Otherwise, the baby may get confused when using different approaches;
• Application security. This can include items such as parental control, a guarantee of the absence of malware, requests for personal data and encryption during transmission and storage.

It is worth spending a little time to choose from the variety of applications presented the one that can interestingly acquaint the kid with letters, open for him the wonderful world of fairy tales and adventure stories, instill a love of reading. We, for our part, have tried to narrow your search as much as possible - we have selected for you the three best games for learning the alphabet: compare and choose what suits you best.

Conclusion

All three applications presented in the review deserve to be in the bowels of your smartphone or tablet and form a child's sustainable long-term interest in learning. The child will return to the fabulous worlds of applications again and again to learn how to read - easily, imperceptibly, fun.

Natalia Sosnina

Co-author and methodologist of the Readings educational application. Since 2016, together with her husband and children, they have been developing a game to make learning to read interesting and understandable. The application is based on N.A. Zaitsev. In her free time she likes to spend time with her family and travel.

Learn more about Natalia on VK, Instagram and the Readings YouTube channel.

Our other articles

• How to teach a child to read
• Whole word reading method
• Nikolai Zaitsev's technique
• Maria Montessori Method
• The child has learned and repeats bad words, how to behave?
• When to start teaching a child to read
• A preschooler does not want to learn to read.

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