by Manali Desai
Take a look at 10 sure-shot and fun activities to teach alphabet to your child!
A,B,C,D,E phonics or apple, bat, cat, dog, elephant? Which makes more sense to you? Most of you will say the latter group. But then, let’s not forget that we wouldn’t be able to form words without alphabets. There would be no words, and no meaning to these words without any alphabets. Thus, the foundation of your toddler’s language starts from these alphabets. How will you go about teaching them these though? Alphabet activities is one such way to do so and make it interesting as well. 
You’d be surprised with the creative ways you can do so. Let’s take a look at few such alphabet activities:
1. Fridge magnets: We use fridge magnets to show off our travel exploits! Why not use it to let our child’s mind be curious and be explored.
2. Matching alphabets: This one’s been my favorite since my own childhood. It wasn’t alphabets though, but a bridge game. And I thought, why not incorporate in teaching as well? Let them match and learn. 🙂
3. Musical alphabets: Instead of musical chairs, play musical alphabets. Fun game, right? Besides, it is one of the indoor activities for kids especially during hot summer and rainy days.
4. Race to the alphabet: Arrange all alphabets in a jumbled manner. Call out the alphabets one after another and ask them to race to it. Exercise + learning! What a great way. 😉
5. The old typewriters, keyboards, stack of cards can come in handy: Don’t throw out those non working keyboards. If you have a typewriter, even better. Presenting your child’s new learning toy. Besides, you can also use the stack of old playing cards to not just teach alphabets but numbers too. These can be the first way of introducing flashcards to your kids 🙂
6. Bake the alphabets: Make the kitchen a part of the learning experience. Bake it yourself and ask them to follow you or bake the alphabets and ask them to identify it correctly to be able to savor and relish them. What a treat and an amazing reward system too! The possibilities are endless here, really. Get your creative caps on then. 😉
7. Make the travel/trip more interesting: Use the travel, trips and outings as a learning way too. Point out new objects and words and ask them to identify the alphabets. You can even say the word and ask them to identify the alphabets in it.
8. Don’t read the words, read out the alphabets: The same thing as above but in the everyday context. Use small to big things and tasks for teaching the alphabets e.g this is your B-E-D, it has the three alphabets.
9. Make a song/rhyme: Sing and make them sing along as much as possible. Remember that song from a popular Bollywood movie- Hum Saath Saath Hai? “A b c d e f g h I…. J k l m…” it’s stuck in our heads forever (just like “Do, Re, Me..” from The Sound of Music) because of its tune. Why not use it to teach our children as well? Not necessarily the same tune though. And you can come up with alphabet rhymes too. Kids love rhymes and this way they’ll learn the alphabets too.
10. Look, touch, feel: This works the best! Point out something and ask them what it is. Then ask them to identify the alphabet associated with it. You could also modify this further. For instance, ask them to go touch the object whose name starts from “A” and so on.
There are a lot of fun activities for learning the alphabet, with which – one can open the magical possibilities of language for a child. You may and surely will come up with many more ideas as you start incorporating them. Good luck with the above and do share any new activities to teach the alphabets, if you come up with them!
Happy teaching and have fun 🙂
