Creative Ways to Teach Your Child the Alphabet

 

Anyone who has kids or has taught them will tell you how difficult it can be to get them to focus on anything for extended periods of time, especially if it’s anything educational. That’s why we’ve came up with a couple of creative options you can try to coax kids into learning and hopefully remembering their ABC’s.

Drive Somewhere:
This one is fairly easy to pull off, especially if you drive your kids on the morning school run. All you have to do is point at things like billboards or licence plates and have your children work their way through the letters on it.

It’s an interesting way of learning and it has the added benefit of keeping your kids amused on those long haul journeys or when you’re stuck in traffic.

Alphabet Challenge:
This one can be a lot of fun if you do it right. What you need to do is call out a series of letters or show your children letters on a board for a few brief seconds then have them write a word associated with that letter.

So for example, you would say the letter ‘b’ and they would then have to write ‘ball’, ‘bee’ or if they’re trying to show off ‘byzantine’, although the latter would probably be a bit of a fluke.

Make Alphabet Snacks:
It’s common knowledge that kids love snacks, they will devour everything animal shaped or colorful that’s put in front of them like a pack of tiny piranhas. So what better way to funnel this hunger than by making them snacks based on the alphabet.

However, instead of turning them loose on the undefended cookies you could tell them to only eat one specific letter.

For example, they can only eat something that’s shaped like the letter ‘a’. That way they start to associate learning the alphabet with treats, which in turn helps to motivate them to learn more.

Sing-Along-Songs:
Sing-Along-Songs are perhaps your best weapon in the war against getting your kids to learn the alphabet. These catchy little tunes are always fun to sing with your children and they will always love a chance to sing a silly song.

If you really want it to stick you could do it every day to maximize the effects of the hypnotic melodies.

Alphabet Bingo:
This one is a ton of fun to play and set up; you can try wrangling your kids in to help you make the cards. For bonus parent points you could let them customize their cards, which will in turn help nurture their own creativity.

How it works is, you sit your kids down and they each have a card with a series of letters on it, you then sound out the letter as if you were a bingo caller and the kids tick off the appropriate squares on their card. The first child to fill in their card or make a horizontal or vertical line is the winner.

If you want to get really creative you could say words instead of letters and the kids can mark off the first letter of the word. Or if you want to help them with their spelling you could change it to the second, third or fourth letter, although you should make sure the letters you’re using will appear on the cards.

Alphabet Bag Game:
Last, but not least is the Alphabet Bag game. This activity is pretty straightforward to set up; you need a bag and an assortment of items.

Once you have your bag you then show the contents to the kids and ask them to pick an item beginning with a specific letter out of it without looking. If they get it right they win, simple as that.

These are just a couple of creative ideas you can try to help your children learn the alphabet, each child will take to these various activities differently, it just depends on how fun you make it for them.

When you’re making your own game at home just remember that your main focus of the activity is to make it as fun as possible for your kids, otherwise they won’t show any interest in it at all.