We started our homeschool journey after our twins turned 2 years old. For the first year, it was a lot of thematic learning on animals, insects, food, our body, etc.
There was a lot of resistance from my part to go straight into academics. I felt that I should give them more opportunities to build their gross and fine motor skills before embarking them on alphabets and numbers. Thus, we did a lot of crafts, painting and read-aloud instead. and of course, tons of playground visits and climbing opportunities.
At 30 months, we gradually introduced numbers and counting. 6 months on, we added on alphabet learning when the twins were confident in their number 0 to 10 and were able to count meaningfully.
I am sharing in this post the activities we did at home that have helped them with their early literacy skills.
My objectives throughout their homeschooling journey are not just the academics. We do not expect the twins to be readers nor spelling bees at 3 years old.
Rather, we want to cultivate their interest in reading and willingness to explore, develop their motor and visual skills, logic and physical wellness. I am hoping that they will stamp a lovely memory of their early childhood that will stay with them forever, an early childhood that is filled with fun and laughter.
The activities are mentioned almost in chronological order, wherever I can.
ABC Puzzles
I guess puzzles are one of the easiest way to get little kids acquainted with alphabets. I tried introducing them the wooden alphabet puzzles when they were 2 plus, but they were not receptive to the toy. I reckoned there were too many alphabets all over and it was overwhelming for them.
I brought out the same toy again when they were around three years old. On this second attempt, they showed no hesitation in proceeding with their puzzle work. I believe this response revealed their readiness to start their alphabet learning journey.
From here, we moved on the other alphabet puzzles* with increasing complexity over time.
Alphabet Books
The Alphabet Book* by P.D. Eastman. This is one of the most enjoyable ABC books that I have ever read. It is super hilarious and engaging, even my 2 big kids enjoyed the book.
There are so many other interesting options in the library, and I will be borrowing more.
Alphabet Flashcards (similar to Heguru method)
https://www.rightbraineducationlibrary.com/
The Right Brain Education Library is one of the very useful paying websites I subscribed to and it had proven to help my twins to pick up numbers, counting, alphabets and phonics.
I find that for the subscription fees we pay, it was significantly more worthwhile than signing up for a physical Heguru / Shichida class. No need to travel, find parking and eat out.
We were pretty consistent for the first 6 months of the subscription but the twin’s interest died out subsequently. I guess they have other fun things to do than staring at flashcards.
Painting Sessions
The twins love painting. So we learned alphabets via lots of painting sessions, from alphabet blocks to alphabets with accompanying animals.
It became a test of my drawing ability. I am so thankful for the invention of social media that made helped me tremendously with the various drawings that I had to produce at the twins’ mercilessly requests.
AlphaBlocks
The AlphaBlocks videos are truly my life saviour. Screen time is nothing evil as long as we use it wisely, selectively and with limit.
I was apprehensive about teaching phonics, especially since I did not have a good foundation to start with. So I toyed with sending them to phonics classes until I discovered AlphaBlocks on Youtube by chance.
Within weeks, the twins’ alphabet recognition and phonics awareness improved at rocket speed. And best of all, it was totally free!
Alphablocks is the hit CBeebies TV show. The Alphablocks are 26 living letters love making words. Although the songs they sing are mostly silly, they provide a firm foundation of key phonics skills. Browse through Alphablocks’ Youtube channel and you will find a huge collection of videos ranging from basic to advance.
The twins became bored with the videos after a while. But I will make sure that we revisit the chance periodically as the channel uploads new video regularly and I also hope for the twins to build on what they have learned.
Play a Game of Bingo Alphabets
The twins love board games, so making use of board games to teach them alphabets is one of the effective ways to make learning enjoyable.
We started off Bingo Alphabets solely in uppercase letter, and subsequently to lower case and finally matching up the different cases. Every session is an opportunity for alphabet recognition and phonic awareness where they read out the name of the letter and the accompanying phonics.
Check out this post for more details, and get your free printables too.
Learning Alphabets with Bingo – Free Printables to Share
Activity Books
Activity Books are a must for us. It helps the twins to get accustomed to some structured learning as well as for instructions taking. These are vital to get them ready for kindergarten in a formal setting.
Kumon ABC’s Write and Wipe Lowercase
A wonderful wipe-clean kit for learning to write alphabets. I use these as flashcards to learn alphabets too.
Kumon My First Book of Uppercase Letters – I tore the pages out and laminate them for multiple uses.
Highlights – The Big Fun Preschool Activity Book
Highlights is one of my favourite brands of activity books for engaged learning through fun and laughter. And Highlights books often cover visual skills such as visual perceptions, visual figure-ground, patterns, etc. which are often not given sufficient coverage in our local curriculum.
The Highlights books come in colourful and attractive prints that are understandably expensive. To ensure that we get to use them for repeated practises, we laminate those pages that we want to practice over and over again, or we simply write using pens with fading ink.
Typing On My Keyboard
Typing on the keyboard is a sure fun way for the little ones to learn alphabets, but it does require a ton of patience from myself as they certainly take ages to complete a short sentence.
DYI Worksheets
Practical activity sheets that I can prepare in minutes and meet my needs.
I learned the first activity below from the Parents College at the Seed Institute.
The alphabet learning activity aims to help the child to pick up and differentiate alphabets that look similar, as well as to train her to read from left to right. To do so, the child should circle the first alphabet from the left, and without lifting the pencil, draw a line towards the next identical letter.
Alphabet Learning Activities for the Work-in-Progress
Learning Beginning Sounds
We embarked on beginning sounds after the twins gained confidence in phonics recognition.
But they were resistant at first. They probably felt uncertain and uncomfortable moving on to a new skill. So I had to start with something they like – cut and paste. And my strategy worked on the first attempt.
Scavenger Hunt for Beginning Sounds
I had also tried asking them to sort the flashcards based on beginning sound. Nope, they rejected and ran away. On the second attempt, they requested to scavenger hunt for the flashcards instead.
So I created a hunt-and-sort activity. The twins would hunt for the cards all over the house, and sort the cards according to the beginning alphabet thereafter. It was a hit.
Alphabet Magnet Letter Constructions
The twins are having difficulty remembering how to write alphabets correctly. So I thought constructing letters may be a way that may help them in alphabet learning.
I have been looking out for the longest time, and I finally found a set of letter construction* that is reasonably priced.
Building Words
The twins are finally ready to form words. It was hard for them for a start, and they jumbled the order of the alphabets. I am thankful that they now understand that they learn to form words starting from the left.
I think we will be building a lot of words for the rest of the year too, to build on their newfound ability.
These are what we do for now. What is your favourite alphabet learning activities? Share them with the readers here.
You may also be interested in the following posts:
Enjoy Learning CVCs With Bingo (Short Vowels ‘a’ and ‘e’)
Sage Formula for Preschool Chinese – My First Review and Free Printable Activities
Magnetic Tiles for Building Numbers
15 Awesome Nursery Maths Activities My Toddlers Love
Our Homeschool Routine – Today’s Flow – July 2020
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