These are some alphabet cards I've been (re)designing as I work on some alphabet awareness with my son Jamie (aged 4), in combination with some phonics skills (which I showcased on video here).
We're at the halfway point, and the following download presents letters A-M:
This is all about basic exposure to the alphabet upper-case forms and connecting them as sounds to a range of words. The great thing is that this time around (I think I've made these cards about four times over the years with different classes of very young learners), I have Jamie with me and he loves helping me choose pictures to go with the letters/sounds.
The screencast below shows Jamie and I designing a card in Microsoft Word for the letter "L". You can hear Jamie's contributions (may need to turn up the volume - the microphone wasn't all that close to us) as we make the card and choose the pictures. This is also a good little demonstration of how easy it is to use Microsoft Clipart to enhance your word documents!
It's interesting to note how Jamie always goes initially for the very dark, blocky images. I have to get him to negotiate a little with me, because we need images that he'll be able to colour in (AND ones that are not going to chew through all of our expensive printer ink!).
You can also hear Jamie applying some of the things he's learned from my phonics books, most notably the way he sounds out words, connects a letter to a sound and then stretches it out to find words he knows.
The screencast below shows a similar process as we go about building "M" (it also demonstrates how to choose a colour clipart image if you can't find a black and white one, and how to greyscale it for a B/W worksheet).
What happens after this is that Jamie colours in the card and we chat about the letter and words together. When he's done, we tape it on the living room wall next to the other letters in the sequence he has already done. This gives him constant exposure to the letter and the pictures, with lots to remind him and talk about. It's also a useful reference when we sit down together and do the phonics books together!
As I mentioned earlier, this isn't the first time I've made or used these materials. They were a VERY handy resource for very young learners in the kindergarten programs I worked in (many years ago now...).
Below you can see a small group of Korean children I use this activity with (believe it or not, a few of those kids are only three-going-on-four!).
This is so useful because it gives the kids some focus (looking and colouring in) while I gently talk with them. The children above have actually moved on to the next stage, which involves scrambling the clipart pictures on new pieces of paper, colouring them in and talking about them, then cutting them out and sticking them on the correct alphabet letter template.
I think this post also showcases just how useful kindergarten teaching experience becomes after you've had your own children!
:-D
