I will be honest and say that Willow made my job pretty easy, as she has always been interested in letters and their sounds… from when we would play with ABC puzzles, read alphabet books (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom approximately 1 million times and counting), sing, etc. When the time came to move from learning the actual letters to their sounds, it felt like a natural shift and she picked it up quickly. I am hoping for the same ease with Fiona, but every child is different (and that’s okay!)
Today, I wanted to share some of the resources and activities that helped her master the sounds. (Amazon Affiliate links below)
Leap Frog’s Letter Factory. If I am being 100% honest here, this is the number one way that my daughter learned her sounds. No shame. I found it on HBO and all it took was 1-2 watches until she was singing along and then singing it randomly throughout the day. Sometimes I would just start to sing the song myself (because it obviously will get stuck in your head) and she would fill in the blank for the sound. She loved that. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the #1 thing that has made the letter sounds stick. The rest of the resources I am including below simply reinforced what she already knew through this program. If there is one thing on this list to do, it is this.
ABC See Hear Do. We love this short and sweet letter sounds book because it is perfectly for active, wiggly ones. You learn the sounds along with movement/gestures which is particularly great for kinesthetic learners. It is affordable and I highly recommend it. At the time that we used it, it was included on Kindle Unlimited (so check that out if you have it).
Sand or shaving cream letters. In conjunction with handwriting practice, this was one way we reinforced sounds. I would ask her to use her finger to write the letter in shaving cream or sand and I would have her repeat the letter sound.
Super Why show and game. I have found this PBS show to be the best for letter sounds/pre-reading. Both of my girls are engaged when it is on. We love it so much, we bought the game for W’s birthday and she loves playing. It teaches everything from letter recognition, letter sounds, rhyming, and reading.
Explode the Code. Once she had a pretty good handle on sounds, we picked up the Get Ready for the Code workbooks. She liked them but they got a bit repetitive. We ended up abandoning in the B book because she pretty much mastered at that point. We may go back to using it eventually as a supplement if needed. If your child likes workbooks, this is an inexpensive and effective choice.
Reading Eggs. If you have it in your budget, I recommend Reading Eggs (aside from reading, the math game Math Seeds is also great). This app is $10/month but has been well worth the investment because it has reinforced sounds and has moved into pre-reading concepts. A free alternative to this is Teach Your Monster to Read. It gets the job done, but wasn’t as fun because there isn’t as much variety. W would get bored with it pretty quickly.
Random repetition. At the end of the day, it really came down to this. Whatever we were working on, we would repeat repeat repeat. Singing songs in the car, reading together and pointing out words, etc. We talked about letters and their sounds very casually at least once a day.
With letter sounds under our belt, we have moved onto Logic of English, which introduces all sounds that each letter makes. She has been loving it and it’s a great fit. x
