There are only a million-gazillion toys, books, games, videos, flashcards, posters, on and on and on . . . out there designed for teaching the alphabet to your little one. And not all of them are created equal. But you do not need to be the victim of flashy marketing. There are a few tips you can implement to quickly weed out the ones you should take a pass on from the excellent learning tools.
Then you can take it a step further and apply these tips while teaching the alphabet and letter sounds to your child.
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Start with the ABCs . . . or maybe I should say the abcs
My first pet peeve with most children’s alphabet products is the capital letters. They are found in overwhelmingly greater numbers than lowercase letters, even though well over 90 percent of what we read is lowercase. I prefer products that show the lowercase letters along with their capital mates so that my daughter’s brain begins to make the connection that they are, in fact, the same letter.
Another tip: As you’re teaching letter recognition, don’t forget to find and point out examples of both manuscript letters and computer-printed ones. Notice how different a manuscript “a” is from a printed one, also “g.”
Read more about Teaching Your Preschooler to Read.
A is for Apple . . . U is for Ugh
Many children’s alphabet products attempt to introduce phonics by associating each letter with an object that begins with that sound. And, frankly, many of these companies clearly made their choices by throwing darts at dictionaries. Here are some issues to look for:
They use very repetitive examples
I know you’ve seen it a million times: apple, ball, cat, etc . . . This risks the child associating the letter with that one object rather than with the actual sound of the letter.
They don’t use an example that correctly illustrates the sound of the letter
I know, right?! But look closely. You will find it often.
I assume—and maybe I’m just being silly here—that the pictures chosen to illustrate a letter should have the basic sound of that letter. Call me crazy. But the world is full of many, many a product with “chicken” as an example for C, and “sheep” for S. Sure, they begin with that letter. But are we trying to teach phonics here or what? The digraphs “ch” and “sh” don’t belong in a “Baby’s First Alphabet” anything.
They use inconsistent vowel sounds
The VOWELS. Don’t even get me started.
“A is for Apple” OK. So old. But at least it’s the short sound. “E is for egg”. All right. I’m with you. “I is for “Ice Cream” Wait. WHAT?!
Now, in all fairness, I have seen a lot of “I is for igloo.” But there are just as many examples out there of products that randomly mix long and short vowel sounds. Come on, folks. Let’s have some consistency here.
My choice: Choose products that emphasize a letter’s standard phonetic sound (Ex: toys that say “B says /b/” when the Bb button is pushed) rather than its connection to a particular word. OR, alternatively, it offers a wide variety of good examples to go with each letter. AND choose products that teach the short and long sounds for each vowel, or, better yet, stick consistently with the short sounds.
And this brings me to my final gripe about products for teaching the alphabet. The mother of them all. The one that grinds my gears more than any other. Please allow me to step up on my soapbox to say . . .
Find more great homeschooling resources here.
X is for Xylophone belongs in the same book as P is for Pneumonia
Also, lest I be incomplete, “X is for x-ray” or “x-ray fish” is also a swing and a miss.
It just makes no sense. None at all. I shake my head at you, popular-toy-distributor-who-shall-remain-nameless. For shame.
And yet, I totally get why they do it. They are trying to keep it all nice and neat and tidy with a picture that illustrates the beginning sound of the letter. And they marry themselves to this idea at the expense of actually teaching children something valuable for the stage they’re in.
You see, x-ray doesn’t actually start with the sound of X. Thus the hyphen. So when you say the word, you are saying the name of the letter NOT the letter sound /ks/.
And xylophone? REALLY? Well, toy developers just cannot come to grips with the fact that X makes the non-standard sound of /z/ at the beginning of a word AND that there is only one of these words that children come anywhere close to relating to.
Forget the fact that there are SO many words that really are great examples of the letter X for children. FOX, BOX, or OX anyone? It is totally worth the effort of explaining to your child that, “in this word, the X makes the /ks/ sound at the end of the word rather than the beginning.” This way, your child is (1) learning the standard sound of the letter and (2) getting more and better examples of words they will actually encounter in early reading.
Now, it’s time to take all of this with a grain of salt. I am not suggesting that owning products with these less-than-perfect examples is bad or damaging to your little one. We have them. How do you think I started noticing all of these irregularities? They are still lots of fun and the kiddos still learn great things from them.
But when you get to that more official “preschool” stage or you are being intentional about teaching letter recognition and phonics, I would take the time to choose more effective educational products. It will set a great foundation for the years to come and the next stage of sounding out C-V-C words.
To sum up: Look for products that:
- teach lowercase letters in addition to capital ones,
- use proper examples of each basic consonant sound (including X), and
- teach all the short vowel sounds, or both short and long for each vowel.
These tips will help you wade through the myriad of products out there and quickly identify which ones are top-shelf.
Just remember to always have fun with it no matter what you use and enjoy your learning time with your little ones.
