We began with sign language before my daughter was one. Alphabet cookies before she was two--Now that is a really great incentive! At lunch time, I would go through the alphabet signing the letters. Eventually, I began adding the cookie element. I would show a cookie with a letter and both sign and say the letter. Later on, she could only have the cookie if she could tell me what the letter was up to six cookies at a sitting. Then, she had to also tell me the sound they made. The unfortunate part was that the cookies where only capital letters, but it got her attention! She started recognizing letters in the books I was reading to her, while she was on my lap. It was not that difficult for her to begin recognizing the lower case letters. As I remember, I did not use flash cards much, but I did use the ones that had the upper and lower case on the face of the card together.
I used colorful workbooks, also, bought from Sam's Club to see, if she like them and that was an enjoyable reinforcement for the things she already knew.
I have read that some parents leave teaching the names of the letters for later and just begin teaching their sounds. I thought that might have been a good thing to do--but we were past that stage before I read about it.
My daughter has a friend who goes to a homeschooler's school where they use music to teach letter recognition and so on. I don't know much about it, but I do know that it worked well for the boy, who was musically inclined and has a mother who does not like to teach from books much at all.
I have another friend who has an alphabet chart running along the top of a room and they go over them daily.
I hope this gives you some ideas. Statistics: Posted by seekingmyLord — Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:00 am
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