Teaching Letters Without the Workbooks.

Both of my daughters knew their ABC’s by 18 months old.

When I say this, I don’t mean they could sing their ABC’s. I don’t even mean that they had letter recognition as long as the letters were listed in alphabetical order. I mean that my girls could recognize all 26 letters, capital and lowercase, presented in any order and any context. They pointed them out on their own all around town. True mastery.

By 2 years old, Savannah knew all of her letter sounds. Charlotte is a week shy of 22 months and, at the time of writing this, it seems she’s on track to hit the same milestone. She knows more than half of the letter sounds consistently. She can also spell her name- Charlotte, not Charlie- without any visual references or verbal cues.

Why is this significant? Because I didn’t sit with either of them working out of workbooks or drilling flashcards. I didn’t devote a daily block of time to building these skills, sit home every day and sacrifice other experiences in order to teach them, or go out of my way to track progress. My girls picked up these lifelong skills so early because I understood a few things about a child’s developing brain…

Letter recognition is a standard Kindergarten benchmark. Of course, there are students at every end of the spectrum. Some come from VPK knowing all of their letters already. Others work all year long on letter recognition and letter sounds. Far too many are held back in their very first year of school because- even after all of that time- they haven’t been able to retain them. Either way,  3 to 5 years old tends to be the age range that most children begin to be taught their letters.

Meanwhile, research shows that 80% of a child’s brain is developed by the time they’re 3 years old. There are more neural connections happening during this critical development window than any other time in a person’s life- about 1 million new synapses a second. The more background knowledge a child can build in this period, the stronger their foundation will be for all future learning.

This critical development window should first and foremost be for building a child’s foundation of secure attachments and a healthy sense of self, then for experiencing the world around them. Spending time running through the grass barefooted and climbing trees, pointing out fire trucks as they drive past, reading books just for the sake of bonding, or learning to interact with others over picnic lunches or park play dates are more important to a child between the ages of 0-3 than rushing to learn the foundational skills of literacy. Every experience a child has helps them to form schematic frames in which they can organize vocabulary, emotions, and cause and effect relationships. The more experiences a child may have, the more these schematic frames are formed and refined, and the greater their ability to think both critically and creatively becomes. Sitting home and practicing letters and their sounds too early (an abstract concept for such a young learner) could actually hinder a child’s academic ability then. Not to mention crush any enthusiasm for learning.

UNLESS you understood the priority to give your child lots of learning experiences outside the home, but used the moments in between outings to capitalize on intentional conversations and play-based learning.

Everything my girls learned about literacy before the age of 2 happened while I folded laundry nearby, as I sniffed their baby-shampoo-scented heads and read books in the rocking chair with them before bed, as we cuddled on the couch after nap time while they were still groggy, or while I needed to buy myself a few moments of independence as I made dinner or packed the bags for our next outing.

Small pockets of intentional time, consistently. Not an assignment scheduled into every day, but an opportunity taken each time it was noticed.

So often we make our child’s education into an agenda when it was always meant to be an experience. Then we wonder why kids think they hate learning. They don’t hate learning. They hate “school” as we’ve established it. The segregation of academic tasks to stiff chairs, sharp pencils, and stacks of workbooks.

So, if you’re like me and wanting to build foundational literacy skills into your child’s life from a young age without sacrificing their play days… or if you’re a few years ahead, with a school-age child who already feels overwhelmed trying to learn them… here are my favorite workbook free ways to teach letter recognition and sounds.

Note: A school age child will need to know letter recognition and letter sounds, but will also need to practice letter formation. Workbook free letter formation activities will be outlined in another post. They are most appropriate for children who are establishing dexterity.

Please also note: As an Amazon affiliate, I do receive a small commission on anything purchased through my links. My personal conviction is that I do not recommend or share links to anything I have not personally purchased or tried. Thank you for your support of our family and my writing as you shop these links. And please be reminded that true joy is not found in materialism or comparison, so I pray there is never any pressure to purchase something just because it’s what another person is doing. You are equipped with the Holy Spirit to make the right decisions- including purchases- for your family and budget.

Children’s Literature

There are so many different alphabet books out there, but I love an alphabet book that isn’t just about listing the letters and words that start with each letter. I want an alphabet book that tells a story, weaving in the letter names through literary devices like rhythm and repetition so that children don’t even realize they’re learning them.

That’s why the childhood classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a Miners household favorite. (No, really… Justin pitched the idea of dressing up like this book for Halloween. He’d be the palm tree. Charlie would be the letter C. And me? Well Justin’s suggestion was that I’d be the coconuts. It seems he forgot this idea was about coordinating family friendly costumes.)

In all seriousness, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is one of the first books we begin to read our children because the language is rhythmic in a way that is engaging even for small babies of 3 or 4 months. At first, reading together is about bonding but, over time, this title becomes a good learning tool, too. 

Around the time that each of my daughters turned 1 and were beginning to talk, I had already read the book to them so many times that I was ready to begin pausing before words I thought they should know and letting them fill in the gap. (This is an oral reading technique called Cloze Reading, if you feel inclined to research its benefits.) I’d pause just before words at the end of a rhyming phrase. For example, “A told B and B told C, I’ll meet you at the top of the coconut ____.” The girls would pick up where I left off by reciting “tree.” Once I could confirm that they’d been listening closely enough to retain parts of the story, I began to pause before the names of some of the letters too. I’d also point at the letter while I waited for them to make the connection.

Pointing at the letter was part of my teaching strategy because- every time that I had read this book with my girls for all the months prior- I had been preparing them. I had pointed at each of the letters as I’d read it and helped them make the connection between the printed symbol and the letter names I was reading aloud. Now I could point at a letter and wait for my daughters to fill in the story with its name too.

At the very back of the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book, the complete alphabet is written out in its proper order. When we got to the end of the book, I wouldn’t rush to close the cover and put it away. Instead, I’d take my daughter’s hand into my own and help her to form a fist with only her pointer finger extended. Then I would hold her fist and move it along the page so that her pointer finger touched each of the alphabet letters as I sang the ABC’s. This was another opportunity for her brain to make the connection between the printed symbols and the spoken language. It was the same skill we’d just practiced through the pages of this book, but with an approach different enough that she didn’t realize I was asking her to do the same cognitive task again. Some days, Charlie has also liked to switch roles and hold my hand/move my pointer finger to each letter as we sing the ABC’s.

After a few weeks of singing the alphabet at the back of the book together like this, I’d ask my daughters to point to different specific letters on the page. I’d say, “Now show me L,” and they’d point. Everything we’d done previously had been about teaching the letter names, but this  allowed me to informally assess how much they had actually learned and retained.

Now after we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom each night, we’ve graduated to pointing out the letters that make particular sounds. For example, “can you point to the letter that says mmmmm?”

Although I feel strongly that you could never own too many books, you don’t need a large variety of titles for your child’s first 12-18 months. Children benefit from reading the same few over and over like this as they identify patterns and make connections to the story’s pictures.

To make books more engaging to young readers, try also adding movement or interaction. I like to make my fingers “scurry” up the coconut tree when the book talks about letters meeting at the top. When all of the letters fall out of the tree, we make a point to kiss their boo boo’s and ask them if they’re okay. As the adult letters pull close the lowercase letters that have come crashing down, I pull my children close and smush my cheek to theirs.

Hooked on Phonics recommends even more alphabet books that tell a story, like Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I’m eager to check a few of these out myself.

Personalized books that help a child learn to spell their name are another great starting place for identifying letters.

Puzzles, Blocks,  Fridge Magnets, and Sensory Bins

I am very strategic when it comes to purchasing toys for my children. I even create Amazon wish lists to share with family members when they ask about my children’s birthdays or Christmas. For as long as we are living in a townhouse without storage closets, we do not have a lot of space to take on toys without purpose. Every toy has to teach something (a fine motor skill, an academic skill, vocabulary), and they have to be able to be played with in multiple ways.

A good quality wooden alphabet puzzle can be played with in the traditional sense, but its pieces can also be thrown into a sensory bin for another kinesthetic learning experience. The same goes for wooden alphabet blocks and alphabet fridge magnets. As my daughters have pulled out the pieces from the sensory bin, we’ve made it a point to name the letters they represent aloud. I like to write the alphabet out on a giant poster and have my children match the pieces they pull from the sensory bins to the letters on the poster. Sometimes they like to match them to the pages of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom or their other alphabet books.

Now that Charlie is working to master letter sounds, I throw many random toys in the sensory bin with the wooden lettered toys too. As we pull each one out, we practice the sound the toy’s name starts with and then sort them out using the alphabet poster. For example, the grapes from her play kitchen, a small zebra figurine, a beaded bracelet, etc.

You could also spread these types of toys around the house, give your child a clipboard with the alphabet written out, and have them go on a scavenger hunt for the matching letters. They can check off each letter as they find its match. The key is to do this activity with your child, having conversations about which letters they’re looking for and which letters they’ve found so they’re continually hearing the letter names and connecting them to the written symbols, called graphemes.

Since each of these toys are classics, I can usually find mine at thrift stores or children’s consignment shops.

Sound Books and Sound Puzzles

Sound books and sound puzzles are some of my favorite things to offer my children when I’m busy making dinner or while they’re in the back seat of the car. They can have the name and sound of each letter reinforced for them without me physically having to be there playing with them. I’ve linked the specific brands we have.

When you’re looking at alphabet books or puzzles, you want to pick ones that use words starting with the short sound of each vowel. For example, a puzzle that shows an apple for the letter A rather than an acorn, or an igloo for letter I rather than an ice cream cone. It is easier to teach children the short vowel sounds first and then to add in later that they also have a long vowel sound that echoes their name. Similarly, look for puzzles that have pictures representing the hard sounds for C and G… cat instead of circle, guitar instead of giraffe. Your children won’t learn the soft sounds for these letters until later. Trying to explain all the letters’ different sounds at once will only overwhelm them.

Foam Bath Letters and Alphabet Fridge Magnets

Foam bath letters and a scoop net make for such a fun way to spend a few intentional minutes connecting with your child after they’ve finished their bath. I find that rushing them out of the water too fast causes a fight… kids LOVE water… so, we use this to our advantage as I call out letter names and challenge my children to find them and scoop them up. When I first started this with my girls, I only put a few letters in the water at a time. I would use those same few letters every day. Once they began to learn how to identify those letters, I gradually added to them until the whole alphabet was floating around them. When your child is ready to begin working on letter sounds, you can simply switch your wording from “scoop the letter S” to “scoop the letter that says sssss.”

Alphabet fridge magnets are great for encouraging your children to play in sight while you prepare dinner. You can take a second here or there to hold up an ingredient and point out a letter on a bottle or can. Your child can find the same letter among their magnets. As they move to practicing letter sounds, you can hold up ingredients, say their name, and encourage your child to find the letter that ingredient starts with. This set of magnets is adorable! These little moments when we lift our head from what we’re doing to connect with them not only helps build a relationship with our children, it also gives purpose to the alphabet toy they’re engaged with and helps them to stay focused on the task longer. What’s interesting though is, it’s the opposite with imaginative play. Interrupting our children in imaginative play breaks their focus on the imagined rules and structure of the game and brings them back to reality.

Play Doh Letter Stamps and ABC Sand Molds

One of my pet peeves is when children don’t know how to play with Play Doh so they just squeeze it until it falls apart in lots of little crumbs. This squeezing is purposeful. It builds hand strength which promotes dexterity. But.. I just cringe. So, when my children have been too small to know how to use play doh to intentionally sculpt something after some initial squeezing, I’ve helped them to roll it out flat like pizza dough. Then I have thrown alphabet letter stamps onto the table beside them.  As they stamp different letters into the doh, I help them to name the letter stamps they pick out and press down. The play doh stamps I invested in were a little on the pricy side, but I wanted something durable that my children could use for many years as they became beginning readers and spellers. One day they will press CVC words like dog, man, pig, and fat into the dough as we talk about beginning, middle, and ending sounds and basic word families. They could even use these to practice spelling sight words.

I found my ABC Sand Molds at a children’s consignment shop and, almost immediately, visions of spending a day at the beach practicing letter names, sounds, and even spelling CVC words raced through my mind. These molds can also be used outdoors in the dirt of garden beds or inside in neat trays of kinetic sand. This version I found online is a close match to the ones I bought second hand.

Dot Markers or Paints with Alphabet Print Outs

This is another activity I like to pull out while I work on a task nearby. I’ll pull out a dot marker letter printable, sit my children down at their table, and let them dab the letter with the bingo-dabber-like paint bottle, or dot marker. As they interact with the letter on the page, I keep my own hands busy even as I talk with them about the name of that letter, the sound it makes, and all the things that start with that same letter. If the task I’m wrapped up in makes talking difficult, I can put on a learning video from YouTube about that same letter while they paint it. Then they’re hearing the name and sound of the letter being spoken aloud, and making the connection to the written symbol or grapheme in front of them. This link will take you to a Teachers Pay Teachers page full of free dot marker letter printables.

I should preface that, just like I do with sensory bins, I teach my children the expectations for dot markers rather aggressively at first. They are for paper only and any stamps that land on the table or my child’s hands or face call for immediately putting away all materials. Though it results in a few meltdowns as my children build the understanding, once they see that I’m consistent with my dot marker policy, they use them a lot more responsibly.

YouTube Playlists During Snack Time

Here’s the thing, Mama…  making peace with small amounts of screen time starts with planning very intentionally for what your children will watch and when. When Savannah was on a feeding tube, her pump ran over the course of one hour. After about a year, we were able to wean down the time to 30 minutes. This was still a long time, and I needed something for Savannah to do that would keep her still and safe while she was tethered to this machine. So, this was the first time that I had the thought… if I’m going to likely put my child in front of a screen at certain times of the day anyway, why don’t I plan YouTube playlists with content I’d actually like to prioritize with her?! I created a playlist for each day of the week so she would have plenty of variety. Each playlist featured a different video that taught letter names and sounds, number recognition 1-10 or 1-20, colors, and shapes. Over time, as she learned these skills, our playlists evolved to include days of the week, months of the year, beginning sounds, blends and digraphs, and even Spanish vocabulary videos. Because I was building the playlists, I could also decide how long I wanted them to last and only add the number of videos which would put the playlist around that amount of time.

I just recently made these same playlists for Charlie. She watches one each day while she eats her snack, which encourages her not to get up from the table and scatter crumbs around our house. While she watches those, I’m able to do a quick pick up of the house before nap time when I launch into my own tasks- like this blog! You could also plan your videos for during the breakfast or dinner prep, or during car rides on a tablet.

One of our favorite YouTube accounts for teaching letter names and sounds is Jack Hartmann. He has so many engaging videos for each different foundational literacy skill. I did introduce screens shortly before the age of 2 because we had a newborn and needed some grace as we learned our new rhythms, but I’ve felt comfortable with Jack Hartmann being low stimulating enough. I prefer a video showing a man singing and playing guitar to an animated video that’s cutting in and out of different scenes, characters always coming and going.

Whether you find a quality YouTube channel or children’s show teaching the alphabet, consider whether it is low stimulation by paying attention to how many times the background, scene, or angle changes. In a typical children’s show, scene changes are occurring every 1-3 seconds. It’s hard to unsee once you see it. In a lower stimulation show, these transitions are happening every 4-5 seconds or more. The characters may still be animated and blink or move their mouths and arms, but the scene behind them stays the same throughout entire interactions. This is significant because a young child’s nervous system is still developing and can become overstimulated by such shows. This can have affects on the child’s ability to take in, process, and retain new information.

Capital/Lowercase Matching Activities

We own this popsicle activity for matching capital and lowercase letters, but there are so many different varieties of toy for this skill out there. I believe I found mine at Sam’s Club. I love their book and learning activity section.  There are also free printable paper versions on Teachers Pay Teachers. Sometimes I’ll choose a paper resource over a physical toy if I know it’s a skill that takes a little longer to master and I want to be able to present it in multiple ways and keep the task engaging over time. In this case, the task might be the same, but the cards I rotate might have different designs according to the season or nearest holiday.

Activities That Address Fine or Gross Motor Skills First

As you consider your child’s fine motor development, look for toys that develop these skills and can still be used to reinforce others. For example, I found a set of lacing cards at a children’s consignment shop. Each one features a different letter of the alphabet and a picture of something beginning with that same letter. While my child is engaged in the act of lacing, we can have some light conversation about the letter, the sound it makes, the picture representing that sound, as well as other words that start with the same letter and sound. This is the exact set of lacing cards I have.

Some other ideas for fine motor  activities like this include using tweezers to pick up and sort alphabet beads, unwrapping alphabet puzzle pieces from aluminum foil, squeezing pipettes to soak letters written in marker as their names are called out, clipping clothespins with letters written on them on top the coordinating letters written across sentence strips, or picking up and gluing small objects like beans, sequins, and beads on top marker outlines of alphabet letters. Even the dot marker pages from above would fall under this fine motor category.

When thinking about gross motor development (or, maybe more honestly, just wearing your kids out before nap time) consider obstacle courses with different features of the course marked by alphabet letters. You can guide your children to complete the obstacle course by following the order of the letters through the course. If a physical obstacle course is not possible, this can also be accomplished with a chalk obstacle course. You can also use chalk to write letters out across the sidewalk that your children can race to find and “swat” with fly swatters. If you have paper plates, you can write letters on them and spread them out to act as targets for ring-toss-like games. As your child throws a ring, a ball, a bean bag, or something of the sort, they can call out the name of the letter plate they’re aiming for. To encourage this, maybe you create a rule that the child cannot earn points for hitting a target unless they’ve first named it. Musical chairs and four corners can be adapted to highlight different letter names. Jack Hartmann also has letter sound videos that lead children through workout type movements as they review the letter name and sounds.

Less Toys, More Talking

When I was a fresh college graduate with a newly signed teaching contract, I spent weeks researching the different reading benchmarks for the grade I had been hired for. For each of these benchmarks, I would scour the internet for games and activities I could print and laminate. I spent large amounts of money on digital files, computer ink, and laminating pouches and cancelled plans with friends just trying to feel prepared enough for each unique student. I understood the responsibility of the role I’d been entrusted in a child’s life. Unless a child is homeschooled, there is no child that skips out on the education system. So many children speak of school and learning with such disdain. I wanted to make a difference in that. I understood that a child only gets one childhood. One chance at building this foundation for a lifelong love of learning.

And then, one day, when I finally had my class before me, I plopped many of these games down around my classroom and- like any new, naive teacher- expected my students to flock to them and immediately begin playing with others, learning the content, and making core childhood memories. I thought I was rocking it with engagement and strategy. It had never occurred to me that I might need to practice playing the same game with the students for several weeks or even months after introducing it before they remembered the concept or the rules and were able to play it without my supervision.  Educating children is a responsibility that can never be outsourced to mere technology or tools. More than any resource, a child needs the teacher.

Suddenly this tote full of resources I’d proudly packed into my classroom cabinet felt like so much wasted time. I had missed the whole point. Helping my students to learn wasn’t about providing the most or the best learning tools. Any toy or learning tool you invest in is only worth  the conversations it inspires. It’s all about the connection that’s happening through these experiences. From a baby’s earliest development, it is the back-and-forth interactions between the child and his or her caregiver that stimulate neural pathways and promote both cognition and language. It’s no different when we sit with our children to educate them.

So, let me say this directly…

You do not need to rush to buy every toy on this list to help your child with letter recognition. In fact, you don’t need to buy even a single activity from this list to teach these foundational literacy skills if you didn’t want to or couldn’t swing it financially.

The best asset you have to offer when teaching your child is your time. The rest really doesn’t matter.

If you buy alphabet sand molds, buy them because they make you and your child laugh with joy as you talk about the letters on the seashore, not because you think it’s the secret to getting them to read faster. Or don’t buy them at all and arrange free sea shells in the shape of letters on the same beach.

Either way, these are the children that will learn to read.

Because learning happens best when it’s tied to feelings of love, wonder, and creativity.

What’s one way you can begin learning together intentionally this week?