How to Teach the Letter A

   The time has come to introduce my youngest daughter to the alphabet.

   Being the youngest, she has grown up watching her older brother and sister do their schoolwork and has been chomping at the bit for awhile, even though she is only three years old.

   There is no right or wrong age to begin teaching your preschool child early reading skills.  It has a lot to do with the individual child and their eagerness and excitement to learn.  All the same, while our letter of the week packet has a lot to offer three year old's, they definitely cannot do all the activities in it by themselves, as yet.  But let's look at what a smaller child can do.

   With young children, there are so many ways for them to experiment with letter-sound relationships.  The way I like to begin teaching the letters, is with a story.

   Let it be known, I didn't coach her to cry when the kitty "disappeared", but this does demonstrate one of the reasons why I use a friendly animal character to accompany children on their alphabet journey.  Glimmercat helps children to learn because young children love familiarity and routine in the midst of newness, and this is exactly what this friendly kitty establishes.

   So, I introduced my daughter to Glimmercat and shared the first story of how Glimmercat slipped off the letter A on her way to pick apples, and now she had a solid mnemonic introduction to the sound of aaaaa (short a).  At that point, she was ready for flash cards.

   There are only four flashcards in our Letter of the Week packet.  We try to keep it simple.

   I recommend letting children work together on these, after you first introduce them.  That way they are practicing "reading" the little words, connecting the letter words to the pictures, and feeling just a little important about all their knowledge in the process.  See what this looks like here:

Now that we have practiced our flashcards, there are millions of ways to learn just a little bit more about letter A...children will see and recognize it in street signs, they can cut the letter A out of magazines or junk mail, they can draw it in sand at the beach or in salt in a pan, they can point it out in the stories you read to them.

Speaking of stories, let's look at a few of the stories I love to read out loud and include in my letter A week!  I try to focus on one of the A subjects from our flash cards each day, so I have found fun children's books for each.

Feel free to print the above list out and keep it on hand the next time you go to the Library to check out some letter A books!


Interspersed with these books, you can purchase our Letter of the Week for A packet and print out easy crafts and activities for children that tie in perfectly with the subject areas in these stories.

Although some of the activities in this packet are intended for older children, (as mentioned) some will work perfectly with little ones, too.  Let's look at those!

This one above, is our Path of Motion Practice sheet.  I laminate this sheet (using clear contact paper from Dollar Tree) and then my daughter can use a dry erase marker to follow her arrows.  It's the perfect size for her small hands!

I believe it is important to teach the correct way to make letters from the beginning, but not at the cost of enjoying the writing process.  My daughter had several days of working on her letter A practice sheet.  Each time, I would remind her to follow the arrows.  Now she does the big letter "A" and the little letter "a" on her own, correctly.  And as you can see, she is able to do them perfectly:

We don't over-do this, by the way.  At age three, little ones can be done in five minutes or twenty.  My daughter is anxious to do "her work" because she watches her old brother and sister doing theirs.  To her, this makes "work" a delightful and exotic experience in her life.

We want to keep it that way for her!   Here's how we do that:  Crafts...

A is for Alligator

Simple Puzzles...

A is for Ant!

And anything Edible you can fit into your Letter Fun!

A is for Apples and Apple Pie!

As long as you fill your learning times with these engaging experiences, little ones will be able to handle more challenging attempts like this one with our Letter Maze that we modeled in our Teaching Lesson here:

Keep it fun!  Keep them coming back for more!  Children are already geared towards wanting to learn.  All we have to do is steer them in the right direction.

If you feel you need more concise or scripted lessons, those are also offered in our Letter of the Week packet, where we walk you through five days of fun learning experiences for each letter. 

Check out our store for more information about our Letter of the Week packet for A.

And feel free to share your own ideas in the comments...what do you love to include in your letter A curriculum?

Letter of the Week Packet for A

A Letter of the Week Packet for A for Preschool and Kindergarten!

This packet for the letter A packet (over 40 pages worth!) is available at our store, here:
 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-A-1948189

 So many of the craft ideas you will see here are available for download. I'll go over a bit of what's inside this Awesome and Amazing packet. 

This might seem like a simple craft (and it is!) but it is just the thing to start out your small chilluns with.  There was nothing they enjoyed more than sticking their finger through that beautiful apple and wiggling it around like a little worm.  Joey opted for an angry worm face on his finger, as you can see, but we are all about smiles, too.

Because we have a large Homeschool following, I include scripted lesson plans in each letter of the week packet:

You'll notice that in the lesson Plan above, each activity is themed with apples.  We try to make sure that every day has a theme as move through the letter of the week.  Children like to be able to predict, and knowing that one day will all be about apples, is comforting and exciting for them at the same time.

How about those Astronauts?  We include a fun astronaut craft in our letter A packet, but we also have this extra idea about dressing up with an Astronaut helmet.

Astronauts are a lot of fun to talk about.  One of my kids' favorite videos is the Cat in the Hat "Space is the Place" dvd.  In this video, they can travel with Nick and Sally (and the Cat) to outer space and meet an astronaut and learn some neat scientific facts while they're there.  We actually love the Cat in the Hat made for television series.  It's a great educational series.

But, our Astronaut Craft looks more like this:

All you need is a photo of your favorite child popped into the inside of that helmet!

We love guided crafts, and I think one of my favorite parts about this craft (besides how great it looks at completion) is that children form the letter A for the Ant's legs before they add the pompoms! We always share which additional materials you might need, and we try to keep those reasonable.

Another craft idea I want to include here, is these cute little clothespin alligators:

They are so fun!  I love their mouths that kids can open and shut.  But not all of us have time to get the materials together for that, so I created a paper printable alligator like this for our Letter A packet: 

One thing I'm really excited about are the letter cards that I created for our packet.  Each of them has a schtick, included to help the kids remember the sound for that letter.  So this one, for A...

 ...our cat character, Glimmercat, has climbed up the A to try to get those apples in that tree, but she slipped and says, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!" (short a sound) as she slides down the A.  We even created a little song to the tune of "Say, say oh playmate"...

...to make it all that more easy to remember.  A says (Aaaaaaaaaa!).

These are just some of the projects and activities in our letter A packet.  Remember, you can download it here in our store:

And here's the full list, Alphabet Letter of the Week packets:


Letter of the Week for A

Letter of the Week for B

Letter of the Week for C

Letter of the Week for D

Letter of the Week for E  

Letter of the Week for F

Letter of the Week for G

Letter of the Week for H

Letter of the Week for I

Letter of the Week for J

Letter of the Week for K

Letter of the Week for L

Letter of the Week for M

Letter of the Week for N

Letter of the Week for O

Letter of the Week for P

Letter of the Week for Q

Letter of the Week for R

Letter of the Week for S


Letter of the Week for T

Letter of the Week for U

Letter of the Week for V

Letter of the Week for W

Letter of the Week for X

Letter of the Week for Y

Letter of the Week for Z 

Our Letter A activities

Caedyn has begun expressing an interest in wanting to read.  Now, at two and a half, he's (WAY) too young.  But, letting my son experience reading through crafts and games?  OH yeah!  Besides, I've been waiting all my life to have a kiddo of my own who is old enough to do fun things with.  So, here's some of the fun we have recently been having with the letter A.

So, this was great--he had so much fun!  My boy's a little perfectionist.  I put the glue (Tacky Glue worked great!) down on the construction paper and he carefully laid down his cheerios.  I will also do this with macaroni and maybe uncooked beans or lentils.  It's great for kids to work with manipulatives when they're this age because holding a pen just right is pretty tough.

Okay, super easy.  You've probably seen this old standby already, but here's our version and I thought I'd break it down.

Green Construction paper:  
1.  A big green A  (freehanded, people-- no one's checking out your ability to make a perfect A, I promise you).
2.  A little u, but you don't cut out the inside of the u.  This is the piece for the alligator's eyeball to rest in.

White construction paper:
1.  A little circle (eyeball, and Caedyn filled in the dark circle by himself--also good practice of shapes).
2.  White rectangle, folded and cut zig-zags out--gives you two teeth pieces.

Marker:  I wrote the "A is for Alligator" and Caedyn drew the tongue.

Another old standby.  Not my idea, but works for the idea, you know?
Red construction paper
1.  Little a, cut out.

White construction paper
1.  Just cut a circle that will fit behind your a.

Green construction paper
1.  Leaf shape (rounded diamond shape?)

Marker
I drew the seeds in and wrote the "Aa is for apple".

Okay, the picture at right is another idea picked off of Pinterest.  Someone had suggested using popsicle sticks and putting velcro on them so that your kids could create letters that way.

I like this one because of course they are re-usable for all the letters to come.  

 This one was one we came up with on the fly but it became a BIG hit.  Caedyn wanted to do another craft so I tried to think of something else with the sound of A as in apple.

Ha!  Axe, of course.  We first made it with cardboard and tinfoil and string.  But Caedyn promptly began cutting down imaginary trees, and he cut down so many of them that we had to reinforce his axe with duct tape and popsicle sticks.

 Here it is reinforced at the right.  But, boy oh boy, he caught on that A is for Axe, even if we did have to cover that part up.

When Daniel came home, I got the whole story, as in why the axe really connected with Caedyn.  Turns out, that Daniel plays a version of the Oregon Trail on his phone with Caedyn.  The one part Caedyn gets to do is the chopping down of trees.  Ha!  Gotta love it when things come together for kiddos like that.  :)

I wrote the "A" in dotted lines with a pencil so he could trace over it.  Doing it really big like this (writing one A on a huge piece of paper) was good exercise.  It gave him a chance to see that he could write an A, too.

I got these pictures out of an alphabet book I bought from Dollar Tree.  He cut them out (yay for scissor practice!) and glued them on. 

He is too young yet to be comfortable with too much of pen or pencil practice but writing a letter really big is rewarding for him (he sees he CAN do it) and great for hand eye coordination. 





I also wanted to show off this other neat find from Dollar Tree:  These are stick on letters that can peel off and be stuck back on again.  So much nicer than the magnetic ones.  And one buck for the whole alphabet!


Now, I'll go into detail on this one.  This is "A is for ant". 

These are ants (just in case you weren't sure), and we made them out of a pair of old socks, two pipe cleaners and stuffed them with plastic garbage bags.  I saw an idea similar to this on Pinterest, but it was a caterpillar.  I just adjusted it a little.

Here, Caedyn stuffs his sock with a garbage bag.  No need to use expensive pillow stuffing on something like this, right?  Tie off sections with your pipe cleaners.

Bend the ends of the pipe cleaners for feet and legs.  We chatted a little about how ants have three parts.

I cut two little holes in the top of the "head" section of the ant.

Then I pushed another piece of pipe cleaner through the holes and bended it so he now has antennae.

 

Then we added googly eyes and a puffy paint smile.  Of course, when your kiddo is just two and a half he needs a lot of help with this project but that didn't stop Caedyn from being terribly proud of his ant when it was all done.  Yay!  A is for "Ant"!