What is the practice?
Interacting with your child around a wide variety of al- phabet toys starts the process of making letter learning fun and enjoyable for your toddler. These toys can be alphabet blocks, magnetic or foam letters, alphabet puzzles, or any other toys with the letters prominently displayed so your toddler gets accustomed to looking at and interacting with them.
What does the practice look like?
Letting your toddler play with letter cookie cutters in sand, cornmeal, play dough, or real dough, use sponges cut into letters in the bathtub or with finger paint, and talking to her about what she’s doing are all examples of good use of alphabet toys. While your child plays, help by encouraging her to turn the letters in the correct way, and by commenting about letter names and the sounds the letters represent.
How do you do the practice?
The important thing to remember when your toddler is playing with alphabet toys is to make it fun by providing a variety of materials, praising her efforts and following her lead.
- Help your child start to recognize that these toys have letters on them by pointing out the letters in her name that also show up on her toys. Most tod- dlers like being able to identify their names, and this introduces the idea that printed letters form words and carry meaning
- Does your child play enthusiastically with alphabet toys?
- Does your child point out familiar letters on his toys, or anywhere else he sees them?
- Does your child turn his toys so the letters are right side up and going in the right direction?
- Make connections between the toys your child is playing with and the words that the letters on them can make. When playing with alphabet blocks, for example, show your child that stacking or lining them up in a certain order makes words.
- Try to avoid making alphabet toys seem too ‘hard’ or too much like work. Even if he doesn’t seem to be paying attention to the letters themselves, the idea that they make words which follow certain rules is becoming more familiar to him, which will make them easier to learn later on.
How do you know the practice worked?
Take a look at more ways to play with words
Magnetic Power
Thirty-two-month-old Eva and her Mom are playing with some magnetic letters in the kitchen. “Look, Eva,” her mom says. “You have all the letters in your name there, just like on your cup.” Eva looks at the letters in front of her on the refrigerator door and on the cup her mom holds up. “It doesn’t look like that,” she says. “They’re not in the right order, and some are upside down,” her mom explains. “Can you move them around to make them look like that?” Eva moves the letters around until they look like her name cup. “Great,” her mom says. “All your letters are in the right order, and right-side-up. E-V-A. That spells Eva!”
Stamp of Approval
Alex loves the messy fun of finger paints. One day his mom brings him a new package of letter- shaped sponges and lets him explore dipping them in finger paint and pressing them onto construction paper. “Look, Alex,” his mom says. “You can make words with all these letters.” Together, they share the sponges. Alex’s mom shows him how she can use the A, L, E, and X sponges to print his name, while Alex stamps letters at random over the paper. “That’s my name,” Alex tells his mom. “I’m writing lots of words.” The stencils give Alex a feeling of accomplishment and interest in writing, as well as familiarizing him with the look of the letters.
Letters the right way
Keoni, a toddler with motor impairments, and his mom are playing with an alphabet puzzle where each letter piece fits into a letter-shaped cutout. Keoni struggles to get some of the pieces to fit, even when he holds them by the thick knobs in the center of each piece. “Look, Keoni,” his mom says. “See these letters on your alphabet poster, how they are all standing in the right direction? Your puzzle letters need to stand in the right direction too or they won’t fit.” She helps him run his hands over the pieces to feel their shapes, and compare them to his poster to see if they are right side up and facing the right way or not. “That will help you know which one comes next,” she says. “If it’s backwards or upside down it won’t fit.”
