5 yr old and the alphabet

[Vickie]

Also I've come to realize that my daughter is a visual learner and she can memorize things very quickly. My son is more of a hands on learner.

 

[zorak]

So this is a bit off topic, but it seems like a bad idea to not teach both the sound and the name. For one, the letters don't always make the same sound and for another, it seems like it would be confusing later. And having a name and a sound really isn't that confusing. Think about animals. Kids learn early on that animals have both a name and a sound. Seems letters should be treated the same. I started talking about letters with both the name and sound from very early on and it was never confusing for my daughter who is now nearly 4 and knows many letter names and letter sounds (I don't exactly quiz her so I don't know how many she knows). And she also enjoys spelling things with me (I sound it out phoneme by phoneme and she says the letter that goes with each phoneme) and I'll make it a point to point out that sometimes letters say different sounds and sometimes you can't hear them at all.

This is exactly right. It's one of the biggest problems we face when parents start teaching their kids phonics or the alphabet. I'm a teacher and what you describe is pretty much how we initially teach phonics. We introduce letter sounds 'a', 'o' etc then very quickly move onto sound rules 'ae', 'oo'. Another frustration is that some parents also incorrectly sound out letters by not using pure sounds.

My advice to the Op would be chat to your son's teacher if you have any concerns.

 

[Wilsey]

I haven't read all the comments (sorry) but a couple of teachers I know said quite often parents teach their kids incorrectly and they have to undo the work they've put in. I think it's better to just let them learn it on their own (and they will). Don't worry about what other kids are doing, or average ages for learning things. Someone had to learn it really early and others quite late to get the average. All of which is normal.

 

[noon_child]

So this is a bit off topic, but it seems like a bad idea to not teach both the sound and the name. For one, the letters don't always make the same sound and for another, it seems like it would be confusing later. And having a name and a sound really isn't that confusing. Think about animals. Kids learn early on that animals have both a name and a sound. Seems letters should be treated the same. I started talking about letters with both the name and sound from very early on and it was never confusing for my daughter who is now nearly 4 and knows many letter names and letter sounds (I don't exactly quiz her so I don't know how many she knows). And she also enjoys spelling things with me (I sound it out phoneme by phoneme and she says the letter that goes with each phoneme) and I'll make it a point to point out that sometimes letters say different sounds and sometimes you can't hear them at all.

This is exactly right. It's one of the biggest problems we face when parents start teaching their kids phonics or the alphabet. I'm a teacher and what you describe is pretty much how we initially teach phonics. We introduce letter sounds 'a', 'o' etc then very quickly move onto sound rules 'ae', 'oo'. Another frustration is that some parents also incorrectly sound out letters by not using pure sounds.

My advice to the Op would be chat to your son's teacher if you have any concerns.

I think most phonics programs teach the name AND the sound. I think my daughter did Jolly Phonics so came home singing songs about the name and sound of the letters and doing an action associated with it.

I wouldn't worry about him confusing letters at this stage, making mistakes is just part of learning and they all go through phases of doing things "wrong" (some really predictable, to the point the teacher warned us not to worry if all their writing suddenly turned in to capitals or went backwards - and sure enough it suddenly did!)

 

[BunnyN]

From a slightly different perspective I am dislexic. Although the school I went to was quite good on the whole it really wasn't good at identifying and helping children with special needs. I am very grateful to my mum who taught me lots of extra stuff out of school. Even then I didn't learn to read until I was 8. No one realised I couldn't read because I just memorised my reading, lol. I've since met more than one child who went all the way through the system without learning to read and I think that would have been me if my mum hadn't helped me out so much. She did phonics and letter names with me from an early age. She never got too heavy with it but it made a huge difference.

 

[liz1985]

My ds is a tiny bit younger but think they are in the same school year (fs2/reception). He also has a picture book as his reading book as do most of the children in his class. He knows the sounds the letters make (phonics) but they dont teach the alphabet as we would know it. Im pretty sure your son will do 'big cat phonics' as that is what most schools do. Try searching for 'ants on my arm' on you tube, and you will find all the little songs they use to teach them the sounds. Its hard to get it across on hear as you cant hear its just letters on a page but the sounds are so much different to how we used to learn them. We used to do baby letters and big letters but they are completly different to that now.