Maybe I Am the One Not Getting It? Learning Letters

It's possible he's just not ready to read. For a lot of kids, that lightbulb moment doesn't happen until 6, 7, 8, or sometimes even later.

However, I would second the eye exam suggestion, just to rule that out. It could be a simple vision problem.

I would also look at the Leap Frog video, especially Letter Factory. I'm not a big fan of video learning either, but this video is really good. My daughter learned all her letters and sounds at 2 and a half just by watching the video a few times.

Good luck! Every child develops at his/her own pace. He'll really take off when he's ready.

When you say he can write an A, is that because he is just copying an A, or if you say "Write an A" he can write it?
If he is looking at another A then he is learning to copy. Not a bad thing and any effort you put into it will pay off as he gets letter recognition down.
If he can write an A when you say it, then he does have letter recognition down for that letter.
Do you read to him? Does he have an interest in books and learning to read? Letters by themselves are just random shapes on a page. Maybe if he understood what he could get out of knowing his letters he would be more interested in it. Instead of trying to do the alphabet in order, start with the letters in his name. That should mean something to him, so he might have more interest in learning it.
I have 2 other suggestions that have really helped my kids. Sesame Street -- they have a letter of the day and they use it throughout the program so there is context to the letter. When my 5 year old was 2 the letter of the day was P and that night when we were reading his colors book he pointed it out to me.
And PBSKids.org -- My 2 year old loves the games on it and is learning her letters. My 5 year old was the same at her age and it helped him learn his letters.
Good luck to you. Sometimes it takes a while for kids to "get" it.

Leapfrog all the way! The videos are engaging and TEACH beautifully!

Also try starfall.com. Lots of learning on that website for kids!

Also check out the book, "How to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons". It teaches SOUNDS, not letters...... They NEED to know what the letter SOUNDS like to be able to actually read. Memorizing the "letter" will not help him succeed in school or life.

When my son was a preschooler, he loved the Leap Frog Learning Factory series of DVDs for learning his letters and sounds. If you don't want to buy them check your library...I know ours has the whole set. I won't say that I relied on the DVDs entirely but I know it did help, especially with the sounds. When he was in preschool class, I remember his teachers noting that he was one of the only kids who could write a lot of his letters. He's 6 now and still does some letters backwards but that is normal. Plus, his real strength is math. I say that b/c it might just take your son a little longer to learn his letters.

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Try Fridge Phonics (from LeapFrog). If you haven't already seen it, it's a little thing that sticks to the fridge and has a piece for each letter. You put the letter in the center and press it and it sings "B says "ba"...B says "ba"...every letter makes a sound and B says "ba." We had it for my younger kids when they were toddlers and didn't really pay attention to it, but they would whack a letter every time they walked by and the songs really stuck with them. It seems that he's missing the connection between the symbol and the sound. Maybe doing it with something that makes noise so that he can see and hear the letters will help him make the connection.

I'm an assistant preschool teacher and have kids in my class at all different levels (the class is 4 and 5 year olds). The lead teacher always says that kids learn at different rates and will only learn when they are ready. It may be that your son just isn't ready yet. I read something somewhere that it is normal for kids to learn certain things between the ages of 5 and 7. Unfortunately, schools group everyone of the same age together so most think that at 5 it's necessary for your child to know something, when in reality it may come a little later.

On the other hand, my daughter has done the same thing. I will try to teach her something and she just doesn't get it. All of a sudden, a few days later, it will dawn on her. So just be patient...it will come. I know it is super frustrating though :-) Good job for trying. THat is all you can do until he is at that point where is wants to absorb the info. :-)

Learning at that age is all about repetition, so it sounds like you are on the right path.

What has helped my daughter is LeapFrog Refrigerator Alphabet. It sings a song when you place a magnet letter in the base ...
'A says ah. A says ah. Every letter makes a sound A says ah.'
'G says ga. G says ga. Every letter makes a sound G says ga, and jah'

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_30?url=search-al...

When my daughter finished preschool, she did not recognize all of her letters. I was really worried for when she started Kindergarten. Her preschool teacher suggested over the summer I really work with her on her letter recognition. I did when I could, but nowhere near what she needed. She started school and the first day her Kindergarten teacher said that children that did not only not recognize all their letters (capital and small case) and know their sounds by the first marking period (3 months of school) were considered "children at risk" (for not being able to pass Kindergarten)

About one month into school....my daughter recognized all letters, wrote every letter and knew all sounds. I really worried for nothing.....

Not sure what your situation is. Whether he needs to know them before school, but you have plenty of time between now and Kindergarten to work on it. Just be patient and keep working with what your already doing. (In my daughters school they have kids that have never been in a school setting and that don't even know how to write their names yet when they start Kindergarten. So my daughter was definitely ahead of the game.)

My question would be:
How is he at recognizing other things visually?
Like shapes, colors, objects, etc.?

There are a lot of great ideas here. However, there is one thing that needs clarification. I can see how he could sing the ABC's without really knowing what he is singing (it just memorization of a song). What I don't understand is how he could write the letters without knowing what he is writing. Is he looking at the letters and then "copying" them? Do you tell him to write a certain letter and he writes it? If so, then there is some recognition there. Work with it. He writes the letter A. You then ask him to find the letter A in the word apple or whatever. If he has trouble, point to each letter and ask if it looks just like the A that he wrote. Then talk about what sounds it makes.

One other suggestion that I have would be to back off for a week or two. Then slowly start working on them again. Make it fun. I don't know how you are with working with him, you could be doing great. However, you need to be sure that you are not putting too much pressure on him to learn the letters. Don't tell him he has to learn this or ask him why he having so much trouble. That will only frustrate him and make him feel "stupid".

After a while, if he still isn't getting it, maybe you could have him tested for a learning disability. That could be part of the reason he is having so much trouble. I know that dyslexia came to mind when reading this.

Have you had his vision checked? Just a thought since I went thru a similar situation with my daughter....worked with her for about 6 weeks on the first five letters of the alphabet but she just couldn't get the hang of them! After having her vision checked we discovered it was horrible!! I felt like the WORST mom in the world to learn that she actually couldn't see what she was doing!! Of course she didn't know that she couldn't see so she had no way to tell me what was going on. After getting her glasses she started picking up on the letters like there was no tomorrow!!! Good luck!!!

When did he turn 5? Will he start kindergarten in the fall?
I would suggest a slightly different approach. He may need to learn some concepts like the difference between a letter and a word, print moves from left to right and the return sweep. I would try a language experience approach. Have the child dictate a sentence for you like, "My mom took me to Target. I got some cookies." Write it down neatly and point to each word reading it to him. Then he can draw a picture. Children can generally "read" whatheir own words before anything else. Then you can say, "This is a letter M. Can you find another letter M?" He can then start to point to each word and read it back to you. He will start to learn to one to one match which is a really important early literacy skill. You can have him write his name at the bottom each time for practice. If you are going to try to teach alphabet letters in isolation I would start receptively at first. Start with the letters in his name. "Show me the T" and have him point. He needs to have some success or he will lose interest. Try sticking with what he knows or partially knows. If he sometimes knows the "A" then present him with 3 cards and have him show you the "A" You may want to focus on just lower case letters for now. Email me if need any more advice. ____@____.com

I didn't read through the responses so someone else may have suggested this already, but my son loves Leap Frog's dvd "The Alphabet Factory." He learned the letters and the sounds they make within a week or so with that thing.

Have you tried the abc song with an abc chart, pointing to each letter.

Totally agree with Lynn T. on the Leapfrog Learning series on DVD. I'm not normally an advocate of learning skills from videos, but this is seriously brilliant. Each video is only about 30 minutes so they aren't sitting in front of the tv for a long time. But the method they use to teach kids their letters and the sounds they make is incredible. The first one is the Leapfrog Letter Factory. The next one is the Leapfrog Word Factory.

My son knew all of his letters at age 2 and he's 4 now and reading at a 2nd grade level. We do work with him a lot and have always read to him a lot. But I am sure that the Letter Factory was the reason he learned letters so fast.

You say he doesn't know what he's looking at when you show him flash cards. Have you had his eyes checked? Maybe he needs glasses.

He needs lots of different opportunities to learn his letters. My twins know all of their uppercase and most of their lowercase. They learned them several ways. I'll admit, watching TV is one of them (Sesame Street and Super Why, although these might be a bit young for him). I've heard great things about the Letter Factory DVD from Leapfrog. They have foam letters to play with in the tub. We have the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics where they put the letters in and it says the name. They have a leapfrog bus with letters around it where you can push the letter for the name or sound. Lots of alphabet books with help, too, since they have repetition of the letter and its sound. You can get some letters to cut play dough with. Give him different ways to do it - he needs to see them, hear them, and touch them.

I would just keep working on it...Have you looked at teh Leap Frog Fridge Phonics? My son used this and loved it. It taught him his letters, and the sounds for them. Don't stress, anything more he knows before school is great, but they do teach them in Kindergarten. My son is in K right now and i work in his class 1 day a week, it is amazing the range, there are some that have NO idea about reading any words(learned their letters from Sept till now), and then there are a couple that are 3-5 years ahead in their reading. Just keep working and not stress too much. Any help you give him will eventually sink in!!

We started letter recognition by starting with our daughter first name letter.

Lets say it was A. We would say. Ann, starts with A. Apple, Apple starts with A. Upper case and lower case.

So she knew her first letter and anytime she saw it on a sign.. Target.. she would say hey there is an A! Then we would say, that is right.. The first letter to target is T. Again, she would start pointing it out.

She also know that every day we passed by a car wash with a Genie. The first letter was G.. Again she would see G's all over the place.. Went back to Target and she was thrilled to recognize the T, A , G!

The most famous was McDonalds.. M was really easy to learn.. DQ.. easy..

I guess once she put together that letters were actually symbols representing sounds. It began to click for her.

Maybe make cards with the name of every item in your sons room would help. BED tape it to his headboard. Closet, tape to the closet.
Door, Window, Books, Legos, Puzzles..

First thing you need to do is relax. Your son is probably sensing how you are feeling and it will cause him to stress out or even more. He is still young . The most important thing to teach him is to love to learn. If you can do that that will be the best thing you can give him. You also need to go pick up the book, Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax. You need to understand your son better. Boys ARE NOT girls. Read to him every night and encourage him to read to you. Pick up books on tape. Whatever you do do not make this something he dreads doing. Find topics he enjoys.