I teach vowels first then start going through the rest consonants. This way once they learn vowel sounds you can start with the beginning reading blends. So like if they know a,e,i,o,u sounds then you teach them B, you can teach ba, be, bi, bo, bu. Once they get that beginning blends concept down, you can add on ending consonants to make easy CVC
words: bat, bed, big, bop, bug.
I teach upper and lowercase letters at the same time, so far it seems to work well!
What order do you teach the alphabet and do you teach upper and lowercase at the same time?
Yes, I also teach the vowels first and then the consenants. It has seemed to be the best way to get them reading. I have found if my little ones can grasp a few words they keep the momentum longer and will continue learning to read easier. Yes, I also teach both upper and lower case at the same time.
I did similar to that to teach my son, but I just wanted to add that he was very much against learning his letters…so I tried to make it fun. I bought a scrapbook set of letters that had various cool animals on each letter. When he learned the letter, he got to take my sticker and put it in his book. He was beyond excited to do that, and that was the best $7 I ever spent.
I teach upper and lower case letter recognition and writing together. Then I go to letter sounds starting with A to Z. I used Hooked on Phonics with my middle son and he took off! I’m really interested in doing All about reading with the youngest the next time around.
We used long vowel, so started with consonants. After they can recognize the upper and lower case and say the sound, then we added long vowels. Short vowels sounds follow later as they learn the different rules.
So far we love all about reading! I got the kindergarten hooked on phonics to try first (from our library) and it seemed pretty good, but I do prefer AAR now.
We stared with the ABC song. After she could sing that through, we did RRSP order, but I only used a couple of those printables and added my own stuff in. My alphabet focus here was uppercase letter recognition and exposure to writing uppercase letters (she kept asking and asking ).
For the preschool year I am using God’s Little Explorers, which does a different order. This time I focused on lowercase letter recognition (though she had already picked most of them up), introducing lowercase letter writing, and letter sounds.
And finally we have started All About Reading 1, which does a mix of short vowels and consonants that allow CVC words from the beginning as well as avoiding introducing easily confused letters/phenomes at the same time.
She seems to have picked it up really well even though we jumped around a lot. A couple things I wish I would have thought about before and done differently: Only introduced short vowel sounds at first as it just confused her to think about multiple sounds a letter could make at that age (3), I suppose this will also apply to hard and soft c and g soon too. Next time I will start with just the most common sound. The other thing is being more intentional about introducing b and d, she now gets them confused and it is frustrating for her when she is trying to read.
I never really thought about it. My kids just picked up their alphabet on their own from watching leap frog. I guess we did do letter of the week activities for preschool. But for those we just started at a and went to z.
).