How to Connect to the Alphabet with your Toddler

Learning the alphabet is not always straightforward. Our oldest knew the letter O and loved the letter O for a long time before learning to recognize the other letter shapes! I think it had to do with his obsession with octopus and a lesson at preschool drawing an octopus 🙂 I began to pay attention to what made him connect to the alphabet when I observed his love of the letter O.

Flashcard creators have seen the value in using animals and silly characters like unicorns or zombies to get kids to connect with the alphabet for years and years – because it works! So our first tip is just that – associate letters and sounds with animals or beloved objects that are examples of the letter .

1. Associate your child’s beloved animals or objects with a letter and letter sound.

As the parent of your kids you know your kids better than anyone – you know what animals light them up and what toys or trees or objects they have fallen in love with! When you practice or review letters and sounds (we recommend this method to learn to read with a phonics primer) an easy action step is to mention the animal or object in the same breath as the letter sound. Expert tip: focus on the short vowel sounds for the main five vowels, use a beloved animal or object that has the correct or most common sound for the letter! For example it is irregular for an X to make the sound of a Z, so don’t use Xylophone to connect with X. One of our sons is named Axel, so we say “X makes a “ks” sound like Axel’s name” emphasizing the “ks” sound as we say Axel’s name. If you take five to ten minutes right now I bet you could have a list of words for each letter sound that makes your kid smile at every letter! Don’t focus on picking words with the sound at the beginning of the word – just make sure to emphasize the sound as you say it so your kids connect to the alphabet sounds while you’re showing them individual letters.

2. Connect to the alphabet regularly, on a schedule your kids can predict and also look forward to.

Regular practice and review of phonetic sounds and their corresponding letters is linked by research to improved reading comprehension. So set up a routine your kids can look forward to! We pass out stickers every time they practice letters. Also I try to use breakfast as the predictable pre-activity. The kids know that when they finish breakfast they can get a sticker if they do some learning practice! They pushed away from a new thing that they weren’t masters of at first – we all get apprehensive over new things. So be consistent. And pretty soon you’ve got willing participants who are telling YOU the sounds of each letter and giving examples in speech of the sound in words! My boys fight over who gets to practice first 🙂

3. Read together.

I know, I know. It’s another thing that becomes hard to schedule and it’s an easy thing to drop off the bed time routine! I drop it all the time! But really the most significant factor in kids ability to grow in reading comprehension is whether or not they understand meaning behind words – and they learn language and meaning most quickly from their parents. As you read and talk with your kids you explain things all the time. You’re constantly reinforcing links to prior knowledge for them. You are the foundation of their language learning and therefore – you are the foundation of their reading skills. While you read point to letters they may recognize and sounds that are in words they love. Use books to connect to the alphabet 🙂

A much cited issue in lower socio-economic families is less child-directed speech and less conversation between parents and their children. This influences the SES vocabulary gap researchers and interventionists are constantly trying to address. By age 5 children who have had less opportunities to talk about a wide range of topics with their parents show an average of almost 2 years less vocabulary comprehension. so build those conversations into your days – and let books be your guide to child-directed conversation! Check out books we recommend on our blog. Let your kids ask you about the pictures! Let them ask what a word means and give them new examples of words they already know as you read. When you create connections for your kids in small, daily moments you are building them a strong foundation for future learning.

Use our Free Lowercase Alphabet Tracing Learning Page and Uppercase Alphabet Tracing Learning Page to practice letters and sounds!