What is the best way to teach phonics along with the recognition of alphabets to a 3 year old child?

Question

whats the best way to make a child understand phonics,i am confused that is it ok to introduce the uppercase and lower case letters together if not than how to differentiate.In her admission test its written recognition of sounds/letters/objects.I NEED to prepare my cousin!!

Answer 1

Yes it is okay to introduce upper and lowercase at the same time.

There is a neat chart which helps children with their phonics, I found it in a book I ordered from "Bal-A-Vis-X".

Basically it looks sort of like this:

Aa : (then there is the picture of an apple) PICTURES ONLY

Ee:  (picture of an egg)                DO NOT SPELL THE WORD

   Ii:   (picture of an igloo)  AND EMPHASIZE THE FIRST SOUND

Oo:  (picture of on ostrich)

Uu:  (picture of an umbrella)

Then the same thing only with Objects that BEGIN with the Long Vowel Sounds. eg.  Aa; Ape, / Ee; eagle / Ii ; eye

As a teacher this guy would review the letter with the picture

Aa: a-pple emphasizing the first sound.

He also discovered that the children had not developed the habit of  listening clearly or enunciating.

He put the chart up and reviewed it on a daily basis.  (Mind you he began with kids who were way behind the curve and within a short period of time they had sound with letter recognition)

The old alphabet song is always good.  Do this and the chart with some sort of hand clapping rhythm make it fun, make sure you are speaking clearly.

Hope this helps.

Remember kids are sponges at this time and they are absorbing all kinds of information.  The absolute worse thing that can be done at this time is excess TV.  It promotes limited attention span, inactivity, brain deadness, thwarts the imagination.

Read lots of books, and play simple word and board games, sing lots of songs.  And have it be enjoyable with lots of encouragement.

Answer 2

Patience...just sitting with paper & crayons drawing pictures & writing the words describing them.  I (as did my pediatrician) also felt that Sesame Street is an excellent television program for young children.  My pediatrician was slightly biased however, as she was one of the doctors consulted on the programming.

I started with recognisable words in their everyday life.  Off, on, right, left, in, out, stop, go .....and colours.    Both my kids were reading by the time they left kindergarten so I must have done something right.

Answer 3

I use dry erase boards. I start the year just drawing lines that are used for letters. I do this very slowly, then I show them the letter. I have a year long calender I use that each week I do one or two letters. I start by talking about the letter, if I was teaching A I would show pictures of apples, go apple picking, sing songs about apples. Then I show the letter A for them to write. Make sure you tell the children about letters before this step, chances are most of them already know this. I am a three year old preschool teacher, and all my students can recognize letters and write them. I would not worry about upper and lower case letters. I would just take it slow and at least try to get the upper case letters known to the child. Chances are they will be able to recognize the lower case ones after they know the upper case ones. Just show pictures of the letters upper and lower and teach the upper case first. Make the learning fun, and you will be surprised how much your cousin will be wanting to learn.

Answer 4

Starfall.com

Answer 5

Since most of the written word is in lower case, that is what you should start with. Also, starting with the sounds of the letters is better than the names of the letters. They will pick up the names later, the sounds are the important part, the path to reading. My kids love LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD. It had my 18 month old engaged and she knew her letters and sounds within a week.

Answer 6

Slowly.

Just upper case at first.

Watch "Sesame Street"  See how they do it. (use tapes/DVD's of the show)

Don't let the kid watch commercial TV.  record the shows.  Edit out commercials.  Let the kid watch the resulting tapes/DVD's

Commercials cause kids to demand stuff that they don't really want or need.  As soon as they have the thing... they find out how cheesy it is and never play with it.  But they still demand the next toy from the next commercial.

Answer 7

Leapfrog makes a refridgerator magnet toy that sings a tune that teaches not only the letter, but its sounds.

And there is a video by Leapfrog called "The Talking Letter Factory."

I had it for my 4 year old, but it also taught my 2 y.o. all her letters AND the sounds they make.  She is 3 1/2 and is beginning to read small words like sat.