Alphabet Blues

I want to tell you that my 5 year old son does the same thing. it drives me crazy. I want to share a song with you that me and my son sing. This is not to help with recognizing the letter but with learning the sounds.
we sing.....
A says AH, the A says AH, every letter makes a sound the A says AH. The B says Ba, the B says Ba, every letter makes a soung the B says Ba. The C says Ca, the C says Ca, every letter makes aound the C says Ca. ... ect... ect.... ect....
we also play a game where i ask a question like whats a word that starts with the letter Z? and he has to answer. THEN he asks ME a question like Truck starts with what letter? and we will go back and forth with that for awhile.
i wish you luck. hang in there. (im telling that to myself too)

Do you have any good educational stores near-by? We go to United Arts and Education locally - it's a teacher supply store open to the public. We take our kids with us to see what they like and get a few items to help reinforce what they're learning at day care.

There's a book called "Superhero ABC's" that we found at the library. It is written by a real comic book author and is phenomenal. We give it as birthday presents to all our son's friends. Good for girls and boys to help learn not only visuals of letters but also phonetics.

That's my advice.

Another quick thing: either get a chalk board or use chalkboard paint at home on one of your walls (you'll need several coats to get a good chalk board) and have him practice there as well. Kids love being allowed to write on the walls, and it helps reinforce what you're teaching.

When I was teaching my now 5 yr old his letters, colors, and shapes I tried to assoicate the letters with things he enjoyed (sports mainly) and that got him to verbally recognize the letters and then words (this is also how I taught him to read) So for instance F for Football and the football is also brown and a oval....and just continue to discuss the letter, shape, and color for the week all day everyday....make pictures of the letter and put them on all the things in the house that starts with the letter....etc.
Hope it helps a little bit.
Good Luck

Hi M.! I agree with the other post....the Leap Frog Letter Factory is awesome!!! My daughter watched it everyday and picked up on her letters quickly. It has a catchy song to sing along with which makes learning so much more fun anyway. They also have a follow up which I believe is called the Word Factory, which helps them put letters together to form short words.

I highly recommend them. Hang in there!!

Just keep at it, but don't push him too hard. Always make it fun! Don't let him feel bad for not remembering, just remind him that it's an A & keep going. He will get it :)

As for practicing writing, you could get one of those magnetic drawing boards. My daughter loves to draw so we got one for her & she loves it! Great for something to do at a restaurant too. My daughter just recently learned to write her name (all caps) & loves to do that, so she will write it repeatedly on her board!

The best way to teach a child, is not to let them think they are being taught. If that makes any sense. Children learn best when they are playing and having fun. When you turn it into a learning environment, they tend to become bored and you get the "I forgot" or "I don't know" responses.

Your off to a great start, introducing a letter a week. My advise is also not to go in order. If it's "A" this week, next week make it "T".

Good luck and have fun.

M.,
I love love love, the leapfrog letter factory dvds! they are so wonderful! My first wanted nothing to do with the alphabet until she watched these, and my second taught herself to read with them! Love them!
The other thing that I use is a website called starfall... I love how interactive it is.
http://www.starfall.com/
My kids love this too and it gives them a chance to figure out the computer a little bit too. (not that I love that, but it is necessary).
Good luck,
E.

Do you get mad at him or frustrated with him when he gets it wrong, hesitates, or says he doesn't know? It's possible that he is remembering more than you think but he is afraid to answer because he doesn't want to disappoint you if he guesses wrong. Just continue to expose him to the letters and stop quizzing him on them. Actually, it is more important for reading readiness to know the SOUNDS the letters make than the names of them. Think about it--- if he is sounding something out that starts with the letter "h", you would want him to make the /h/ sound, not say "aych". So rather than focusing so much on identifyiung the letters, how about doing things like this:

Make something large with the letters on it. It can simply be done with sidewalk chalk in the driveway, or you can buy an old sheet at a thrift shop and write the letters on it with a permanent marker. Use objects and say....c-c-c-car...what letter does the car begin with? Let's place this car on the letter "c"..... B-b-b-banana..what letter does the banana begin with? Let's place the banana on the letter B.... /h/-/h/-/h/ horse--- let's place the horse on the letter H. Help him for a while until he shows you he is ready to try it himself, no matter how long that takes. Also, make sure you are teaching lower case as well as upper case. We encounter lower case letters MUCH more than upper case when reading

My kids love the "I forget" infact, I loved "I forget" all through my growing up years. It meant I didn't have to try to remember, if I thought I was going to be in trouble for something if I "Forgot" then maybe the punishment would be less (which it never was, but kids, have their own thought patterns). My 3 year old says I forget, often when asked a question about what we did or what something is. But with gentle prodding she'll announce the correct or close to correct answer.

If when your son says I forget, you tell him the answer, you're re-affirming the behaviour and making it easy for him. He'll quickly figure out that by "not knowing" Mommy will do the work, easy! If after you've covered a letter, color etc. you ask him a question that you know he knows the answer to and are met with the "I forget" response, try saying, "Oh, I know it's sometimes hard to remember new things but I know you've got a great memory, you remember.....(fill in an event he talks about all the time) so great. How about you show me how great you can remember this." If he persists with the I forget, I would say "Try, you can take a best guess at it! Even if you're wrong it's trying and that's the very best you can do. We'll do it together but you need to do the work to remember, Mommy can only be your cheerleader!" And then when he does get it, get excited, Hi-5's do a happy dance, whatever it is that will make him feel smart, and proud of himself. And that's the other thing I'd suggest, re-assure him that when he does do something right (not just his scholastic things) that it's ok to be proud of himself. Don't promote arrogance, but self esteem starts now and if as parents we foster healthy self esteem in our children when they are small, they'll be better equipt to be confident adults later in life.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

My son watches Superwhy and Sesame Street and these are excellent in teaching the alphabet through lots of songs, stories anf games. My 3-year old son learned these without us even trying to teach him, can recognize the letters out loud, and can find and type them on the computer.

When he washes his hands, we encourage him to sing the ABC song to make sure he washes for 2 minutes, He's also learned the whole alphabet this way.

We also use washable Sesame Street paints at bathtime, writing his name and other simple words on the wall "MOM" DAD" etc.. He loves to play this game.

The repetition is a great start! Good for you! Make it fun for him!! What I use to teach my kids colors, letters, shapes, etc was use finger paints, sidewalk chalk, play-doh and puzzles (Melissa & Doug have some great ones). Plus I printed large colorful letters, shapes and numbers, laminated them and taped them to my kids play room wall. That way it was always visible to them and they loved pointing to them. Books are still the best tool for teaching so I keep books out in the open all the time.

What I did was I bought a large easel, large finger paint paper and everyday the kids and I would finger paint letters and stuff. They were learning but having a blast finger painting. Plus the kids loved using the sidewalk chalk to do hopscotch but instead of making it a square for every number, I would use different shapes. That is still their favorite game but now we do extreme hopscotch and go higher in numbers, like to 50! It's crazy fun =-)

Go to a local library, educational store or an Arts & Crafts store. You will find tons of fun stuff to use to teach him. Best of luck!

My daughter does that when she just doesn't feel like learning or answering a question at the moment. It is a little frustrating, but when she does that we usually put our "learning" away for the moment and do something else. However, when she is in the mood to practice or learn or answer questions then she could go on forever. Keep teaching though....they surprise with things they know that you didn't think they knew!

The bottom areas of his brain have not matured suffiently to be able to be learning higher order tasks such as this. There are many reasons. If your child did not get enough early motor movement, 4-6 months of crawling, or had ear infections your child is at great risk of learning issues. Look into a reflex integration program such as Masgutova Method or INPP or maybe he needs an auditory processing program like ILS. There are many good programs out there but be careful because they won't work if they are not done in the right order and working on the areas of the brain that need to be matured first like brainstem and midbrain. Also, 5 is young anyway for this type of cognitive learning. There may be nothing wrong until he reaches 7 and is still having probelms. The Corpus Collosum is maturing greatly between 5 and 7. In the most literate countries in the world, they do not teach reading till between 7 and 8. They know the secret of letting a child be developmentally ready for school.