Who knew that tracing the alphabet could be so impactful? If you’re looking for Part 1 of this post, I shared it on I Can Teach My Child (click here).
Now that you understand how powerful Alphabet letter finger tracing can be, I wanted to share some more tips and resources:
Tips
- To get your child to start “all of their letters at the top”, draw a colored dot (see orange dots above). This works for writing and for tracing.
- How do you “read” this book? As your child traces the uppercase A they say “A” aloud. When they trace the lowercase a they say “aaah” (short a sound) aloud. Then they point to the picture and say “apple”.
- When actually writing the letters, if you’re child is also struggling with appropriate size of letters, I wrote about using a house (here) to explain it. This helps big kids too.
- Are your ABC cards getting beat up and you need a laminator? Try plastic page protectors, inexpensive small photo album to hold your cards. I’ve also been known to cover things with clear packing tape if I was desperate!
- One more tip I love to share with parents when it comes to recognizing letters and sounds is the Letter Factory DVD. One student I’m working with uses the tracing book (above) and sings the entire book the “Letter Factory way” – The A says /a/, The A says /a/, every letter makes a sound the A says /a/! Love it!
Great Free Resources
- Royal Baloo has these great tracing cards.
- Living Life Intentionally has awesome Alphabet wall cards and flashcards.
- 3 Dinosaurs has amazing ABC printables and activities.
Materials you can purchase:
- Wipe Clean: Learn to Write Your Letters (a dry erase board book)
- Tactile Letters Kit (sandpaper letters that the kids can touch)
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| I usually just use a green marker for GO at the top of the letter. I digitally added the yellow dot here so you could see it in the picture. |
This post contains affiliate links.
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Kristen is a Reading Specialist who currently works with children in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade. She is the blogger behind Busy Kids Happy Mom, a site dedicated to fun, practical, and purposeful activities to do with your kids. Follow Kristen on Facebook, Pinterest, and Busy Kids Happy Mom.
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That little dot is a great idea! I noticed my kids seem to draw their letters so the look right, but they seem to do it backwards! Great tip!
I like the tracing, it helps give them tactile experience with letters. I just die cut an entire alphabet for my son to use and trace. 🙂
Love Letter Factory too!!
Love the post!!! I’m excited to do this with my daughter. You said for the best results to do it everyday. Should we go through the entire alphabet everyday?
Thanks! Work up some “ABC” stamina :). Aim for the entire alphabet, but break it into chunks if you need too!
It’s anonymous again =) I have been doing this everyday with my daughter since March 27th. I didn’t think she would want to go through the entire alphabet every day but she loves this exercise. She has made amazing progress! At first she knew about ten letters. Now she know all but six and she has all the sounds memorized. We play games where I give her a word and she guesses the first letter of that word. My husband thinks I’m the most amazing mommy ever for teaching her so quickly!!! Thank you for this post!!!
Welcome back Anonymous! 😉 So glad this is working for you and that you’re seeing success in just 1 month’s time! You are a fantastic mom! Thank you for your testimony!