Fun Activities for teaching alphabet letters:

   Fill an empty slice tin with flour or rice and let them trace letters with their fingers.  Shake the tin to start over.

   Fill a large re-sealable see-through bag with shaving foam. Close it tight (!) and let them use their finger to make letters.

   Letter of the Day or Week.  Print out your chosen letter and colour it it.  Pin it up on a large piece of paper and as you come across items, write them under the letter or cut out pictures and glue them underneath the letter.  You could also turn this into a Place Mat

  Teach the letter names by singing the Alphabet Song.  Point to the letters on an alphabet frieze as you sing so that they can see that the letter names match the printed letters.

  Make an Alphabet Book.  Give each page a letter of the alphabet, and stick in magazine pictures that begin with the associated letter sound.

  Make Alphabet Place Mats.  Cut out lots of letters from magazines and glue them onto to some card.  Laminate and use at meal times!

  Make Alphabet Book Marks.  Write or Print the first letter of a child’s name onto the top of a blank bookmark.  Get them to cut out lots of letters from magazines or a picture that begins with their initial letter.

 Make alphabet popsicle sticks.  Buy 26 popsicle sticks and 26 wood cutouts, such as flowers,  that you can glue onto the sticks. With a black marker pen, mark each cutout with a letter of the alphabet.  I made these and played all sorts of games with them.  Each day, my son would ‘pick a flower’ to be the letter of the day – then we would go on a Letter Huntaround our home!

  Make or purchase a wall hanging with 26 pockets.  Mark each pocket with a letter of the alphabet and put inside items that start with the same letter.

 Make an Alphabet Sticker Book.  Same as No.5 but use purchased stickers.  You can get some awesome ones from craft stores.

  Tracing Their Name.  Write their name clearly with a black pen on white paper.  Tape tracing paper over the paper (this stops the paper slipping) and let them trace their name with a pencil.   This helps them associate the shape of the letters with the letters of their name and is also excellent for those early printing skills.  Move on to tracing the rest of the alphabet letters!

 Remember just to work for short stretches at a time as you don’t want to frustrate your child.  Just spend 10 – 20 minutes each day and you’ll be amazed at your child’s progress.

More links to help you teach the alphabet:

Here are some more links within this site related to teaching alphabet letters:

• Alphabet Sounds
• Pre-School Alphabet
• Alphabet Craft
• Alphabet Printables

Find teaching alphabet resources in A to Z’s instant downloads store

What Other Visitors Have Said

Find contributions from other visitors to this page below.

Letters Around the Room
by S.A. Taylor (Fuerteventura, Spain.)

• Place 4 letters around the room on adjacent walls. (For example, a, b, c and d.)
• Tell the children to stand in the middle of the room and run to the letter which starts the word the teacher/parent shouts out.  (For example, donut = child goes to d, etc.)
• Chidren are rewarded with a gold star on the alphabet star chart when the child has mastered each letter correctly using 5 different words of increasing difficulty. (5 x ‘A’ words: apple, anteater, available, always & ancient = * 1 gold star.)
• Object is to have a gold star stuck next to or under each letter on the aphabet chart.
• It can be made easier or difficult and for older children the chart can be used for spelling with their fingers with lists of adjectives, adverbs etc.

Water Balloon Alphabet Fun
Outdoor activity: Fill a laundry basket with water balloons. Write one letter on each balloon, repeating letters often. I do a group of 8 children …

Monster or Mouse?
When my grandson Bradley was learning the alaphabet we sang the song as either the Monster or the Mouse, in a deep monster voice or in a high-pitched mouse …

Beginning Letters Alphabet Game
Place 4 letters around the room on adjacent walls. eg) a, b,c and d
Tell the children to stand in the middle of the room and run to the letter which …

• What is the ideal age to introduce the alphabet?
• What letters to teach first?
• Do I teach letter names or letter sounds?
• Should I teach capital or lower case first?
• Is it a good idea to teach the alphabet in alphabetic order?
• How do I actually teach alphabet letters?

So let’s look at these individually, because the odds are there is at least one question above that you would like to know the answer to!

What is the ideal age to introduce alphabet letters?

This really does depend on your child. I would love to give you a definite answer, like – ‘when your child is 3yrs and 45 days you may begin.’ You know as well as I do that life just isn’t like that! Some children will be ready at 2yrs while others are happy to wait until 5 or 6yrs. What I can say, is that if you follow the advice in step 1 about what to teach BEFORE the alphabet, then it will happen naturally – you will instinctively know when you have ‘reached the ideal’ time to begin the formal introduction of alphabet letters. The decision ultimately lies with your child and not you! Just immerse your child in books, rhymes and phonemic awareness activities and the progression will be a seamless one. Most typically, a child is able to begin learning the alphabet around the age of 3 or 4yrs.

Do I teach capital or lower case first?

I have met teachers who swear by teaching capital letters first and yet others who insist on teaching lower case and then another group who insist on teaching both at the same time! Personally – I advise on teaching lower case first. Why? Because capital letters only account for about 5% of all letters in the written word and so it seams to make sense to pay more attention to the teaching of the lower case letters as these are the ones children will be introduced to first in their environment. After you have taught your child to recognize lower case letters, I would put up an alphabet frieze with both capital and lower case letters and talk about them. Let the child see them and compare them, play games of matching up lower case with their capital letters. Notice the importance of fun here – always make learning fun! While teaching my own children – I would use games to discreetly assess if they had grasped a phonics principle – there was no pressure of ‘tests’ so it was a win win situation. My children particulary enjoyed looking at the Letterland books.

Do I teach letters sounds or letter names?

I teach both at the same time. I would remind my children that animals are called by different names, such as a ‘pig’ or ‘cow’ but that they all make different sounds eg, ‘oink’ and ‘moo’. So it is with alphabet letters, each has a name but also a sound. I would say “this is the letter ‘S’ it says the /sssssss/ sound as in sssun.” Model the sound to copy and use words that are meaningful to your child. If you need a quick reminder of letter sounds here is a quick check list in the box to your right – some words end in the sound to help you isolate the sound you will be modeling for your child. Some letters have more than one sound, but at this stage we just introduce the first sound of a letter.

What letters do you teach first?

Here are some examples of how others teach letter order:

Alphabetical Order: Although knowing letters ‘in’ and ‘out’ of order is important, the main disadvantage of this method, is that a child is waiting a long time before they can start to read words with the letters they have learnt. You really can’t read or write many words with the letter a,b,c,d,e

Random Order: For example, choosing letters of a child’s name or family members can help give meaning to letters

Vowels: These are the letters, ‘a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y’. Vowels are considered important because every word contains a vowel

Mixture of vowels and consonants: Consonants are all the letters which are not vowels. This way is often taught by phonic reading programs, such as Jolly Phonics. For example they start with the letters ‘s, a, t, i, n, p’. One of the benefits of this method is that a child is quickly able to ‘read’ and spell three letter words. These 6 alphabete letters make the following words:

Sat, tin, pin, pat, tap, tip, pit, sit, nit, nip, nap, pan

I personally choose to introduce a mixture of vowels and consonants, alongside teaching the alphabet song, so that they can see ‘where in the alphabet’ the letter they are learning fits into.

How to teach alphabet letters

Here are some Alphabet Activities to help you teach the alphabet letters.

- and I am working on heaps more to inspire you!

Teaching Reading

You are reading ‘step 2′ on how to teach your child to read:

• Step 1: What your child needs to know before the alphabet?
• Step 2: Teaching the alphabet – which letters to teach first?
• Step 3: The best phonics resources – and you already own them!

Each letter within the blend is prounounced individually, but quickly, so they ‘blend’ together.

Blends are usually composed of two or three consonants and can begin or end a syllable or word.

Consonant blends that appear at the beginning of a word, are referred to as Initial Consonant Blends or beginning blends, and those that appear at the end of a word are referred toas Final Consonant Blends or end blends.  

Initial consonant word blends:

Click here for blend printables

Final consonant word blends:

Click here for blend printables

Phonics Blends Classroom/Group Game:

Print out the Blend Cube on the free printables page and play this In The Blender game to review Initial Consonant Blends for a fun phonics blends activity.

Mark each cube face with different phonics blends you are working on. After spending time reviewing the sounds of specific blends, form a circle.

Take turns to roll the cube in the middle of the circle and say out loud a word which starts with the blend the cube lands on, i.e. “tr – tree”.

Each child attempts to say a word which begins with that blend. If they are unable to think of a word, then that child has to go In The Blender - ie, they have to weave in and out of everyone in the circle until they arrive back at their starting point and then roll the cube again to choose another blend and so on.

Continue until all the blends have been used or each child has made an attempt at saying some word blends. Print out more Blank Blend Cubes as you learn more blends, until you have a complete set!

Click here for free printable phonics blends

Flashcards, spelling word lists, blend games, vocabulary lists – everything you need to aid word learning in your child!

click here for articles and FAQ on teaching phonics

• r-clusters
• s-clusters
• l-clusters
• 3 letter clusters

You can teach beginning consonant clusters as soon as children have learnt the single consonant sound-spellings.

r-blends: br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr,

s-blends: sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw,

l-blends: bl, cl, fl, gl, pl.

3 letter blends: str, spr thr, chr, phr, shr. The consonant clusters thr, chr, phr, shr, are made up of a consonant digraph and a consonant.

Ending blends: ct, ft, ld, lp, lt, mp, nd, nk, nt, pt, rd, rk, sk, sp, st (teach these last)

Consonant Digraphs: consist of two consonants that when blended make one sound: sh, ch, th, wh, ph, gh, ng

Exceptions: The consonant blend sc can stand for the /sk/ sound as inscare or the /c/ can be silent as in science. Also, the consonant clusterck represents one sound – /k/.

Most other consonant clusters will almost always stand for the blended sound of each consonant, which makes them very reliable and worthy of teaching to your child.

Print these consonant & digraph cluster flash cards for your own use.

Click here for more information on blends

What are the Vowel Sounds?

From the 26 letters in the English alphabet, 5 of these letters are used to make 19 vowel sounds. The other 21 letters are used to make the 25 consonant sounds.

The 19 vowel phonemes consist of:

5 Long Vowels

5 Short Vowels

3 Dipthongs

A long and short oo (2 sounds)

4 ‘r’ controlled vowel sounds

5 Long Vowel Sounds

Here are some examples:

long /a/ as in gate

long /e/ as in need

long /i/ as in nice

long /o/ as in yoke

long /u/ as in you

 You can also listen to them here:

5 Short Vowel Sounds

Here are some examples:

short /a/ as in bat

short /e/ as in bet

short /i/ as in bit

short /o/ as in bot

short /u/ as in but

 Listen to the short vowel sounds on this video:

4 ‘r’ controlled sounds

‘R’ controlled sounds, have a vowel and the /r/ sound:

or – as in more

ar – as in car

er – as in her

air as in fair

3 Dipthongs

A dipthong is a combination of two sounds, each with two different spellings. Here are three examples:

•  /au/ as in Paul and aw as in crawl
• /ou/ as in mouse and ow as in cow
• /oi/ as in noise and oy as in boy

A Long and Short /oo/ sound

Long /oo/ as in moon

Short /oo/ as in book

So there you have it. The 19 vowel sounds. Of course there are many ways to spell these sounds which we refer to as phonograms.

After listening to the vowel sounds – listen to the consonant sounds

• Word Blends
• Alphabet Printables
• Word Search Puzzles
• Flashcards
• Sight Words
• Rhyme Printables
• Flip Books
• Phonics Worksheets
• Lesson Plans
• Phonics Games

rhyme powerpoint
short presentation – dog/frog, carrot/parrot, cat/hat, house/mouse

Listen to Phonic Sounds

The 44 phonic sounds of our English Language consist of:

• Vowel Sounds
• Consonant Sounds

• See also Schwa Sound
• Lesson plans to teach phonic sounds

Listening to phonic sounds is important for developing your child’s language and literacy skills. By listening & becoming familiar with them, your child will realize that letters stand for the sounds they hear in words.

For example, being able to hear the differences between “cot,” “cat,” and “cut” is necessary for learning how to spell these words.

Ask your child’s teacher what phonic sounds they are learning each week (ask the teacher to write them down for you), so you can begin to point them out in your child’s reading books or read rhymes that contain them.

There are approx 44 sounds (phonemes) in our English Language which consist of Consonant and Vowel Sounds.

There are approximately 70 ways to spell these sounds, which your child & teacher will refer to as phonograms.

It is a good idea to become familiar with the sounds of our English Language because then you will be able to help your child say & spell their phonograms correctly.

Listen to Vowel Sounds 
Listen to Consonant Sounds

Other useful phonics sounds sites: 
Library of English Sounds

Use our lesson plans to help learn the phonics sounds

Word Family Fun: 20 Short Vowel Word Family Books and Activities

By: Tracy Jarboe & Stephanie Sadler

Format: PDF

Grades: K-2

Pages: 193

cat, rake, tall, mare, alarm, mark

Also a phoneme (sound) can represent more than one grapheme (spelling). For example, notice the /f/ sound:

f (fig), ph (elephant), gh (cough)

Leave phonic sounds and return home

• Initial Blend Dominoes: This is a great game to revise initial blends. Suitable for those who know their blends, but just need a little extra practice. Wonderful graphics and a simple dominoe type game make it a very effective phonics game.
• Initial Blend Flash Cards
• I Spy Blends This is a lovely game for two players based on the I Spy Books. Each player hunts for pictures that begin with the blends called out. Very exciting!
• Consonant Clusters & Digraphs

Instant Downloads @ A to Z’s Store:

• Learning About Blends and Digraphs Charts (Full-Color and Black and White)From the Teacher eBooks NOW STORE. Includes:

  Student-Sized Blends &, Digraphs Charts
  Two sizes: 8.5″ x 11″ and 4.25″ x 5.5″ Student-sized charts can be used for small group instruction, or as a student reference tool.

  Poster-Sized Chart Pages 
  Assemble to create a poster board sized chart (22″ x 28″). The poster-sized chart can be used for whole group instruction, or as a reference tool to display in the classroom.

• Initial Blend BINGO: Game for making words using initial blends by Jane Buckley, A to Z Phonics FounderFrom the Teacher eBooks NOW STORE. Excellent game for parents and teachers!
  • Includes 4 large printable BINGO cards
  • Includes 24 printable initial blend tiles:
    br, pl, spl, fr, cr, gr, bl, squ, sw, tr, sp, str, pr, spr, cl, fl, sl, gl, sm, qu, sn, sk, st, dr
  • Different words are made each time you play this game
  • Just print, cut apart, and use!
• Blend Dominoes Game or Learning Center by Jane Buckley, A to Z Phonics FounderFrom the Teacher eBooks NOW STORE. Phonic Blends Endings Used: ib, oy, ot, at, an, id, it, ut, ip, ad, am, ap, ug, ag, en, od, um, et, ay, im, in, ud, ab, ob, ar, ig, ub, op, ed, og.Makes 49 large dominoes. Size: 7.5 cm x 6.5 cm (approx.)
  Print dominoes on tagboard and laminate for durability.
• Ending Blend Bingo Game or Learning Center by Jane Buckley, A to Z Phonics FounderFrom the Teacher eBooks NOW STORE. Makes 4 large bingo cards. Different words are made each time you play this game, which make it interesting and actually more difficult than it looks!
• Many More Printable Phonics Workbooks & Resources

• Large A4 Printable Alphabet in colour or black and white.