Alphabet with Mother Goose Time

Learning Letters and Sounds

The alphabet on its own for the child that does not yet write, means very little. I remember scrolling lines on a paper as a child. I knew those lines on a page were how adults communicated important things but the characters, their sounds, and how they come together to make words meant very little to me.

Mother Goose Time features only 3 letters each month, allowing the child to be immersed into each letter and learn it's shape and sound. For an educator like me, that doesn't do preschool with the kids every single day it also means that they have exposure to that letter still quite a bit in that month even if we miss some days.

Letters-

We build them

These wood pieces can be purchased from Handwriting Without Tears

We shape them with play dough 

We use these laminated letter mats with 'Roll-A-Dough' by Handwriting without tears or easily make your own letters and laminate them for use with store bought or home made play dough.

We write them in other materials

Holding a pencil is hard for little hands not yet strong enough to hold a writing tool for a long time. Using fingers to write can be a great way to change it up and eliminate some frustration. We have used soil, flour, corn starch, corn meal, shaving cream, condensation on a mirror... the possibilities are endless.

We learn the ones personal to us first by learning to write our name

M girl is learning to write her first name and T boy already knows how to write his first name using capital letters only. We are now working on lower case letters and introducing how to spell his last name since he is ready for more.

We learn their phonetic sound by doing activities with them. For this week and the letter P we practiced saying 'p -p - p - pig' and 'p -p - p - popcorn' then making popcorn and using it to make the letter p and then, of course, eating the popcorn.

Adapting the activity for younger kids. Isla is a little young for popcorn so we played pop out the grape. I gave her concord grapes and had her pop them out of the skin saying 'p-p- pop'

Disclosure: I receive Mother Goose Time Curriculum free of charge for educational purposes in return for posting my honest experiences using the curriculum. Photos of children featured on my blog for review of Mother Goose Time are used with signed consent of the child's parents. I welcome any questions or concerns.