K8 asked me how we introduced the alphabet to Monkey. It's hard to put it into words as I have never set out to "teach him his letters". This is our story and some websites we found helpful.
I think that reading is the start of all learning - no matter what you are interested in you will find books about it and we have read books with him since he was born. A book has always been part of his bedtime routine - regardless of how old he was.
We read basic picture books like the one above, we read fairy tales, rhyming books, alphabet books, number books, non fiction - you name it we've read it.
We have pointed out environmental text from the time he started getting interested in it. At the moment he is very interested in signs and reading them - so he interprets the signs into words wherever we go - no smoking, no touching, no parking etc.
Monkey loves Winnie the Pooh and one of the DVDs he watches is about Christopher Robin's book which Pooh loses the pages of and the Hundred Acre gang learn how to write the letters that start their names.
Hence - R is for Roo or Rabbit, T is for Tigger, E is for Eeyore, P is for Piglet, H is for heffalump, G is for Gopher.
With this in mind we created a personalised alphabet book/chart. We used his friend's names etc as the picture cue for the sound. Sadly E is a bit of a stuff up (teacher fail) but we're working on changing that.
Other than that he has a LeapFrog Fridge Phonics in lowercase and a Spin a Letter toy that he's had forever.We also have flash cards and I am planning to make some smaller ones for a memory game and a bingo game. Stud1 has embraced Monkey's love of the PC and has made some simple typing games for him that he will enjoy. All the words have meaning for him and he will enjoy the games.
I have a few other things I want to make in my resource books from teaching but here are some great ideas that I have seen recently and want to put to use and possibly see if they can adapt to teaching numeracy.
- General overview of ideas and progression
- Jar Lid Letter Game - I like how this could be used to build words and also to match numbers etc
- Alphabet Book suggestions
- DIY Alphabet Cards
- Dice with letters (start with their name) and name card - roll die and match the letter and colour or place a matching letter card on top
- Bingo
- Memory
- Letter of the day - how many things can you find on your walk that start with that letter or in your house.
- Making your own books - Monkey dictated one to me last week all about his Daddy and he loves to read it.
- Alphabet Crafts
- StoryLine Online -- popular picture books read by famous actors.
My daughter who will be 8 next month was also very very interested in letters and things. We never really taught her other than to read stories, she also loved the Winnie the Pooh DVDs and absolutely loved flash cards since she was about 2. We used to play "I spy" with them :-). She was 2 when she could recognise certain letters and associate it with certain words. We realised pretty soon after starting school she has a real talent for reading and spelling and when we assessed her at the age of 6 she could read (and understand) to the age of 13 with blended sounds to the age of 26 or something like that. Not sure if it was because she was always interested in stories or whether she just inherited it from hubby who taught himself to read at the age of 4. But either way, I'm really happy she enjoys reading. One website she absolutely loves is www.starfall.com and she used to spend hours and hours on it. Now it is too basic, but at the time was great.
ReplyDeleteYou are lucky that you are a trained teacher. My knowledge is really limited in that respect, but thankfully we have been blessed with really good teachers so far :-).
THANKYOU! I have checked out that first link. I like that one! Im pleased to see that we have been doing a lot of things off that list...and have found some more ideas in it to try!!!
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