Learning Letter Sounds

One of the struggles of parents when dealing with early literacy for children is on how they can teach them of the letter sounds.  Of course, it’s easy to memorize and recite the alphabet, but what about the phonic sounds it creates?  In other teaching method, like Montessori, the focus is more on learning the letter sounds first rather than the name of the letter.  Letter sounds or phonics are the basic foundation of reading and with the child’s knowledge early on in life, they can easily learn how to read and decode letter sound combinations.

Now let us share to you one of the fun ways we teach our kids of the letter sounds, by matching it to their favourite animals!

Introduce this activity to the child as a game.  In this activity we used a magnetic letter that is very much available in some stores, and of course the animal figures (Safari Ltd.) which you can purchase in our shop. 

This 2 year old little boy doesn’t know that he’s actually learning. All he knows is that he’s matching the letters to the beginning letter of the animal’s name.  To him, his putting the animals to their respective “home”.

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Tell the child that you are going to assign these animals a home according to letters.
2. Take the letter a. Say “This is ah.. ah… A.” Make the sound of the letter’s name first before saying the name. 
3. Get the animal/figure that starts with the letter A.  Say, “ahh, ahhh alligator”, emphasizing the letter sound. 
4. Repeat the animal’s name and the letter ‘’s sound.  Say “ah ah… A, then Ah ah alligator.  They sound the same, they’re  match.”
5. Do this to the rest of the letters and animals.

Always use materials that your kids love the most.  This is the reason here, our little 2 years old is learning letter sounds through animal figures because he’s currently fascinated by them. It’s easier to get him involved and hooked to the activity.

A bit of advice, make sure to conduct this activity with little or no distractions at all.  That includes television, gadgets or scattered toys that can divide his attention.

Enjoy!