Preschool ABC's and Dylan

It took me a while to decide on the method I wanted to use to teach Dylan his ABC's this year.  Since he's three, he is ready for simple preschool activities.  

I felt that learning one letter a week would be a good pace for him. I finally decided to use the book/song Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom to help teach ABC's and phonemic awareness.  It's a cute story/chant/song about all the letters climbing up a coconut tree and then falling out of the tree and their mothers and fathers hug them. 

We read through this book/sing the song, every day. I made a "tree" in our school room.  I decided not to make a coconut tree, but a decidious tree since we can also decorate it according to the seasons. The tree I made from packing material that came in our curriculum box at the beginning of the year (twist and tape).  The leaves were 50 for a dollar at the dollar store. I found some giant felt and sticky back letters at Michael's Craft Store for $5.00 (three entire sets of the Alphabet included in one bag).  So once a week, on Monday, we make a new letter climb up our tree. 

 The rest of the week, we do phoemic awareness (Tuesday), early writing strokes (Wednesday), Letter Recognition (Thursday) and game day (Friday).

Some of our activities:

Phonemic Awareness:  I have *most* of the set of My Alphabet Books.  The ones I don't have, can easily be found at the public library.  We read through the book that corresponds to our letter of the week. These books are GREAT for auditory bombardment and increasing sound awareness.
 

                                                         

Then we do an activity like sound bingo, sound hunt in a box of beans (Dylan absolutely loves this activity).  I take a bunch of his small toys and bury them in the bean box.  He has to sift through and find the ones that start with his letter of the week.  Then we sort the objects we find by initial sound.  Similar things can be done with play-doh, corn kernals, easter basket grass, etc.

Writing: We trace the letter.  Sometimes we trace the letter in the air, on paper, or using the iPad.  A great learning app is Elmo Loves ABC's.  Another great letter and number writing app is iWrite.  Letter writing can also be done using playdoh over laminated printouts of a letter.  This is also usually the day we do our craft.

I got these cute letter personifications from : http://missmarensmonkeys.blogspot.com/.  She has a bunch of cute and easy templates.  The kids love these. 

Letter Recognition/Games: I have a bunch of letter themed puzzles we work through.  Sometimes I hide the letters in the bean box and we name them (expressive task) or I ask "Is this an A?" and he tells me yes or no (receptive task). The ipad app Elmo Loves ABC's also has a letter recognition task in a field of four letters.  Some days we also take magnifying glasses or binoculars (they got them in a kids meal at Chick-Fil-A) and look for the letters hiding around the room.  When we see a letter, we yell, "I-Spy an _"  (letter name).

Each lesson per day takes between 15-30 minutes depending on the level of interest.  At any rate, I try to vary it and keep it interesting and fun.  As my mom always said, "If you have fun teaching the lesson, the kids will have fun learning the lesson."