Alphabet Order

Delaney knows her letters and sounds, and of course the ABC song, but needs some help with the concept of alphabet order, so we worked on that for a little while this week.

One of our favorite alphabet videos from www.starfall.com...


How the Alphabet Got Its Order

We began with her alphabet puzzle and dumped all the letters out. First, we had an alphabet race to see who could put the most letters in the puzzle. I think it was a tie.




I mixed all of the letters up. She found "A" and "B". Then we sang the alphabet song about 24 more times so we could make sure of which letter comes next.

Around "L" or "M", Delaney started to catch on, and was looking for the next letter while we were singing, rather than after with a few cues.

And when you have sung the same song 20 times and you are running out of patience, sometimes it helps to pretend you are a puppy who is learning her alphabet order.

It's okay. I have a song all about a dog learning its alphabet. Sometimes you just have to go with it.

Hurray for making it all the way to the end!

We will continue to work on this for a while. When I taught kindergarten, I had these great alphabet rainbows. One side had outlines of all of the letters, and the other side of the board had just a line in the shape of a rainbow. The students started on the outlined side and matched up letters to the letter shapes. Once the students could do this successfully in less than 2 minutes, they moved on to the rainbow line side. The goal was alphabet order in less than 2 minutes on that side too. I am going to have to look for one of these mats...they were excellent tools. If I can't find one, I will just have to make one!

My goal for Delaney is to be able to put the alphabet in order independently in under 2 minutes. We will see how long it takes!