5 Fun Ways to Teach ABC

One of the first lessons that kids learn is the alphabet. We can decorate their room with alphabet cutouts or posters, singing alphabet song and serve them alphabet soups. It is important to immerse kids in alphabet activities as it is the foundation for what is to follow and it requires a lot of repetitive exposure so that they soak it in. They need to be able to know the alphabet, say them, write them and recognize them. By keeping the learning activities fun and varied, it will be easy to make kids learn them.

“Dorothy Whidden alphabet illustration” by Crossett Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Online Games

Online games and mobile apps make teaching a variety of subjects a fun and visually appealing proposition to kids. Young children are especially receptive to online games. They also help develop fine motor skills. These games have everything from animals singing the alphabet to connecting dots and matching games.

Sensory Treat

All you need is shaving cream and superhuman restraint as your child has a fun (and messy time) practicing writing the alphabet in shaving cream. Take a small squirt of the cream and a large tray or a table with a smooth surface. Using their fingers, kids can write the alphabet. You can smooth over the cream if they need to begin again. This also encourages sensory play while learning the alphabet.

“back to school” by Martin Abegglen is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Alphabet Jumble

If you like to wield a paintbrush, take around 26 pebbles and paint each of the alphabets. Dry them out and bury them along with a few blank pebbles in a tray filled with sand. Rice grains work too. Ask your child to play in the sand and pull out the pebbles, and lay them out in the right order. Alternatively, you can arrange some of the alphabet with gaps in between. Bury the rest and ask your child to fill in the gaps with the correct alphabet pebble.

A for Movies

Make an alphabet book. But instead of the ‘A for apple’ route, go with your kid’s favorite characters from cartoon shows and animated movies. A for Alex (Madagascar), B for Batman and so on. You can also take printouts of these characters and glue them into the book. You will have them reaching out for the alphabet more often if they like what is in there.

“PIXAR Alphabet – R” by Jerrod Maruyama is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Park the Alphabet

Here’s a fun way to get kids to match alphabet written in the upper case to their counterpart in lower case. You will need a few toy cars, an old pizza box, Post Its and a marker. Draw parking spots on the inside of the pizza box after flattening it. Place a Post It with alphabet written in the lower case in each slot and the corresponding upper case alphabet on the toy cars. When you call out an alphabet, your kid should drive the car over to the lower case parking slot. This will teach kids to associate the sounds with alphabet and match the alphabet written using different cases.

Try variations of these activities and mix them up to make learning fun. This way you can get preschoolers to practice a skill repetitively.