Picture Cards for A, O, P and L

Here are the cards for the letters my daughter explained about in the prior post. You can print fronts and backs.

I like to teach the lower case letters first because that is what we see most.

The hard ones are the d, b, p and q. I have learned that putting a small capital B in the corner so they can look if they don't remember. I teach them so young that they can't tell the difference. As they mature and learn right from left they will eventually be able to distinguish. Don't ever pressure them to tell the difference, just say "Oh, this one has the circle part first so it must be the d." or "Look the line is first so it must be a b." When they start reading words I still have to prompt them by saying a quiet b or d sound when I show them a word, or have a capital B or D on the card.

Teaching the children the letters this way is so much fun and they can learn all the letters before their 3rd birthday. This is actually the easiest time to teach them. They just think this is a game you are playing.

Letter Sounds for P, L, A, O

Why do we teach our kids letter sounds instead of letter names? Letter names are important, but we want our kids to first think of the letter sound when they see a letter to prepare them for reading. Letter names come naturally after that!

Here are the videos I said would be done about a week ago :) Here are four letter sounds. I will put the cards we use for them here, too.

Letter P- Popcorn popping and make your hand pop open or pretend like you are a popcorn popping!


Letter L- Licking Lollipops. Make a lollipop with your hand and pretend to lick it while making the sound.


Letter O (short o sound)- singing ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, opera,. Put your hands in opera pose (you can even make an o shape with both hands) while singing and pretending to be an opera singer.

Letter A (short a sound)- a, a, a, ants! Pretned like an ant is crawling on you and say, "a, a, a" You can do it to them and they can do it to themselves. Lots of tickles, lots of fun!
Okay, so I have the flash cards and they are word documents. Does anyone know how to convert Word documents into .jpgs? Or is there an easier way to post a file for people to download? They are cute, so if you want them, I need some help. Thanks for the help!

Teaching Letter Sounds, the Fun Way

My mother uses a fun way to teach letter sounds that even the toddler will love to do. My oldest daughter learned all her letter sounds by 18 months because it was such a fun game to play with me. Each letter has a fun action sound and movement to learn the actual letter sound. The kids love them.

I am teaching my daughter who is two her letter sounds right now, so I will be filming my girls doing the sounds and movements so you can see them. Tomorrow I plan on posting two letters along with the flash cards we use. We use these flash cards for running games,
Simon says games, etc. I will also share some of these games after I introduce all the letter cards.

(Here I am, the mother, making an addition to Tati's entry. I want to add in here that I got these ideas from my oldest daughter, Amy. A friend shared them with her and we have been using them ever since. We have adapted them as we have come up with better ideas. If you have any good ideas, we would love to hear them.)