Teaching Children ABC's: A Guide for Parents

I am often reminded that parents need guidance and encouragement when they are helping their children learn at home.  Here are tips you can share with moms and dads, grannies and uncles, friends of young children to support what you do in preschool.  Many of these have adaptations for the classroom as well.  Feel free to share the link to this blog in your next email to families or electronic newsletter.  Publishing the full content with a "cut and paste" from this blog is prohibited, without permission from the author (me!)

First, always remember that the interaction you offer your child with letters of the alphabet should be meaningful and not just isolated memory tasks.  Make it fun and playful, not a structured lesson or drill.  Begin with uppercase letters, as they are easier for children to recognize.  Most print occurs in both upper and lower case so you may choose to teach both, according to the abilities of your child.  Let your child help you see which is best for them.

• Go on a letter hunt! Watch your child as he interacts with his world and everything in it. Letters are everywhere! Does he notice certain signs and logos, such as "exit" signs, store or restaurant logos? When he does, point out and name letters with him. Start with the first letter of a word.   Pick a letter of the alphabet and look for it everywhere it might be.  You can hunt in the house, while driving in the car (street and store signs), down the hall at the preschool or the store, letters are everywhere!

• The importance of our name. Help your child learn to recognize her own name and the letters that spell it. Begin by showing your child her whole name in print. Maybe you print her name on a sign for her door or the refrigerator. You can also put name labels on her backpack, lunchbox, or on a nameplate or inside the covers of her favorite books.  Don't just label everything for the sake of letters; it will make them "visual white noise" rather than showing print as meaningful.  Show your daughter her name on mail like doctor appointment reminders, calendars, or junk mail.

To help your child learn the letters in her name, write it slowly, saying each letter aloud as you print. Then encourage her to copy the letters. The best way to help your child learn how to write at this age is to involve her in activities that help her feel large motions of writing. Squiggles are OK.

• Playing with Magnetics Once your child has a small bank of letters he can easily recognize (maybe letters from his name and those he sees in his world), play with magnetic letters on the refrigerator or even simple blocks. Arrange them to say the names of other family members or spell simple words or words your child is interested in. Pick up on words your child is using (milk, hand, toes, etc.).  You can even make your own "play" letters out of cardboard (old cereal boxes are easy to use for this - the reverse/inside with no print). 

Whenever you and your child are playing and learning, encourage and be positive, know that learning letters or many other things takes time and that your child should improve over time.  If you don't see improvement as you think should happen, talk it over with your child's preschool teacher or someone who has studied early childhood development (even your pediatrician).  They can help you understand what is normal for your child.

A friendly checklist for literacy development can be found in Anytime Reading Readiness, a book for parents of 3-6 year olds from Maupin House Publishing.

Tips for Planning in the New Year

In follow-up to my appearance on Robert-Leslie's InvestiGator Club webinar series yesterday, I'm providing even more resources on this blog.  I'll be adding several installments, including a link to the webinar contents.  Here's the first:

If you listened in to the webinar, welcome back.  Many of add-on resources I mentioned will be highlighted here.  If you weren't able to join us, a link to the recorded webinar is now available.  We'd love to hear comments back from you either through an email to tla@readingisforeveryone.org, comments posted on this blog or on Robert-Leslie's Facebook and other social networking locations.  Placing WEBINAR in the subject line on mine will assure you get a quick response.  

On to the business of the new school year

What is the literacy loop?


When you combine efforts of teachers, parents and guardians, community, authors and illustrators, librarians and media specialists, all centered around a child, you have the best chance of success for EVERY child.  That's the concept behind the Literacy Loop. 

We know that questioning is a great way to understand at a deeper level so TLA recommends that you use the framework of questioning to plan how to integrate all these partners into your support for children.  In the partner area of evaluation, you can do the same.

Greater Attention on Early Childhood

I was thrilled yesterday to see that Barbara Chester, President of the National Association of Elementary School Principals was quoted in an Education Week article as calling for "focused professional development to help elementary school administrators meet the higher expectations of modern early childhood education".  I was also pleased to see the National Association for the Education of Young Children weighing in to make sure that developmentally appropriate practices are at the forefront of such training.

This also opens a door for expert teachers in the early childhood world to have the kinds of collaborative conversations I talk about in my book for educators of 3-6 year olds, Before They Read.  By addressing the needs of teachers in both arenas, and helping them understand one another's expertise, we can build partnerships that help make the transition to kindergarten easier for young children.  With the right preparation, they come to school with a rich foundation which brings them to the reading table eager and ready to learn.   This book gives you plenty of starting places and I've even created a facilitator's guide for a book study around this title (great idea for joint professional development). 

Don't Forget The Importance of Play

If we push too much rigorous, structured instruction in the preschool years, the product we send to kindergarten is quite different.  We send children, according to the research of Drs. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Diane Eyer (authors of Einstein Never Used Flashcards), more anxious, and less creative. In an overly structured environment, what young children get is deprivation of the "pleasures of creating their own games and the sense of mastery and independence they will need to enjoy running their own lives." 

Here's a bit of play you can engage in with young children that helps them practice (and learn about) rhyming skills.  My friends, Greta and Cora, play Rhymin' Simon with me quite proficiently.  All the while, they are acquiring mastery in the skill through play.  A simpler version, with strong teacher support, helps children learn the basics of how to rhyme.  Teachers have been kind enough to share many stories about children playing the game on their own, once they've learned the basics of knowing when words rhyme.  It's fun!

Extra links to help you grow your own literacy loop:

Facebook/The InvestiGator Club:  Place to watch for updates on the webinar, Supporting the Literacy Loop in Every Classroom:  A Planning Guide for Administrators (and Teachers) in the Preschool Environment.

Resources from Early Childhood InvestiGator Webinar Series.  Here you'll find SEVEN valuable links that extend beyond the content of the webinar (watch it first)!

Visit my website to learn how to play Rhymin' Simon.

Comments in a blog regarding Phillip Kovac's 5 Ways to Change the Status Quo 

Article on The Importance of Play in Human Evolution.

The Cheerios Challenge for First Book - your state (if they are in the top 5) can receive 20,000 books for the children who live there.  Click here to find out more.

Come see The Literacy Ambassador Up close and personal at:

Guest instructor for K/1, 2-3rd grade, 4-6th grade, and 7-8th grade classes for homeschoolers through CCA (home school cover school in Huntsville AL).   More info from 256-882-3668. (weekly September 1 through November 17).

Featured speaker at GA Association for the Education of Young Children - October 8 and 9, 2010 (scholarships for attendance of this conference still available) - Gwinnett Center (metro Atlanta, GA)


Featured Speaker at Region IV Head Start Association Annual Parent Conference - October 14 through 17, 2010 (Myrtle Beach, SC)

Featured Speaker at Alabama Reading Association Conference - November 2-4, 2010 (Birmingham, AL)

Round table session at the Kentucky Engagement Conference - November 19, 2010 (Louisville, KY)

Session at the National Reading Recovery Conference (February 5-8, 2011, Columbus, OH)

Featured Speaker at the IL Reading Council Conference (March 17, 2011), Springfield, IL

More on the way . . .