Learning Our ABCs!

One of the main things we  (mostly Hollis) will be working on this school year is learning her letters and letter sounds. There are so, so, sooooo many fun ways to teach the alphabet but today I'm going to share three of our favorites. In the past we have done a letter of the week type of curriculum and did a craft project with each letter. That was fun and great and wonderful. But a couple of weeks ago, we attended a homeschool convention where I went to a class on whole brain teaching. It was so interesting! I have actually signed up for another free workshop on the same topic next month. But the speaker shared ways to bridge both left and right brain thinking so that a concept could be easier to learn, master, and recall. She mixed a lot of black and white information (for left brain learners) with colors and stories (for right brain learners) so that we are using are whole brain to learn new things!
So I came home and searched blogs and Pinterest for a new way to teach the alphabet. But....I couldn't find anything with this approach! I found gestures for the letters on one blog. And I found poems for each letter on Pinterest. But nothing where the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic all matched. So, I got busy and made them for our girlies! And we LOVE them. We have been practicing all week just looking at the posters and telling the stories. It is AMAZING how many gestures and sounds they remember simply from remember the picture and stories! This whole brain learning stuff works, ya'll!!!

Drinking her juice and saying /j/ /j/ because every juggler needs his juice to be strong enough to do all that juggling!!!

 Marin is telling the stories and listening to the sounds in the whisper phone! 

This video was after hearing our Alphabet stories twice! She remembered so much having all those "clues" to pull from! Way to go, Hollis! 

 If you are interested in this alphabet set, just click on the picture above! 

Other favorites.....SONGS!!! If we can sing it, we have fun with it!

This is a simple song using letter magnets! You sing it to the tune of "Five Little Ducks" but instead of ducks..."five little letters went out to play. When the teacher calls /z/ /z/ /z/ /z/....only the letter ____ came back." She has to decide which letter was being called home and pull it down. Loves it. And it is SOOOO simple. You could easily write the letters on a white board and the student erases the correct letter.

This last activity was actually one of my very first games I ever made for the girls. It is an I Spy ABC game.

 I have the student flashcards printed and laminated (larger sizes available) but they use a dry erase to circle all the letters on the card. Again, super simple but reinforces letter recognition! You can find it in my by clicking on the picture above.

 I'm linking up with The Inspired Apple for her AlphaBoom link up! Go check out all the other wonderful alphabet ideas!