5 activities to help your child learn the alphabet

Among other things, writing exercises one’s memory and motor skills. Your child needs to remember the shape of each of the 26 letters of the alphabet and how to move their hand in order to transpose them onto a surface (usually a sheet of paper). This may not seem like much, but it’s tougher than it sounds. Fortunately, your little one can pick up these skills through repetition and frequent exposure to letters. To help them, you can do the following:

• Print and cut out letter templates
• Ask your child to choose a letter and name it
• Have them outline the letter with their index finger a few times
• Trace the letter on an unusual surface (e.g., an electronic tablet a plate full of salt, or in a sand box)
• Etc.

You can also help your child memorize the letters they’re tracing:

• Start by tracing the letters in their first name
• Associate each letter with a person (e.g., D for Dad, M for Mom, R for Raphael)
• Make up a story for each of the letters
• Etc.

Your child probably has a favourite story. A book they never get tired of, no matter how many times you read it to them. That book is a great way to help your child learn the alphabet. The next time you sit down to read it together, ask your little one to pick a page at random and do the following:

• Identify all words that start with the letter A
• Point to all words that end in E
• Name the first letter of each word
• Etc.

You and your child can also challenge yourselves to write very short sentences using words that all begin with the same letter. Don’t worry, you can ignore this rule for determiners and short adverbs! 

• Example: Clementine’s cat collects chocolates in the cook’s cupboard.

The alphabet is made up of upper- and lowercase letters. While some letters look similar whether capitalized or not (v and V, for instance), others are very different (just think of d and D). Here are a few things you can do to help your budding reader learn their ABCs:

• Write and cut out the upper- and lowercase versions of all letters of the alphabet
• Mix them up
• Ask your child to match each letter with its twin
• Ask them to say each letter out loud
• Etc.

Once your child has mastered matching upper- and lowercase letters, you can repeat this exercise, but with the letters turned upside down, as in a game of Memory.

The results won’t be perfect. You may not even recognize any of the letters your little one is trying to convey, but that’s not the point! This game is about having fun with your child and helping them learn the letters of the alphabet! Here’s how to play:

• Use a timer or hourglass to set the pace of the game
• Write out the alphabet, cut out each letter, and place them in a bowl.

Ask your child to draw a letter at random and try to reproduce its shape with their body while you guess the letter they’re miming. To make things easier, you can ask them questions:

• “Does the letter have a small dot above it?” (the letter i) 
• “Does the letter appear in your first name?”
• “Does the letter rhyme with toe?” (the letter o)
• Etc.

You can take turns miming and guessing.

In the bath, in the car, while walking in the rain . . . You can practise singing the alphabet just about anywhere! It can be sung in various ways:

• In order (just be careful to separate the letters L, M, N, O, P; some children think they’re the same letter)
• In reverse
• Starting with a random letter
• Etc.

You can also go a step further by singing random letters to make your child laugh!