Learning the Alphabet is a good guide for parents who
are beginning to teach letter recognition to their child. Beginning
with A, the book devotes two lessons to each letter of the alphabet.
The first lesson introduces both the upper and lower case letter.
On the opposite page are the teacher notes, which give step-by-step
instructions on guiding the child through the lesson. The second
lesson reinforces the letter, with a page that has four different
objects on it that begin with that letter. For example, the letter
H has a heart, hot dog, hook, and house with the word printed below
each picture. Again the teacher notes are conveniently on the opposite
page, and they focus on the sound the letter makes. This format
continues throughout the book. After the alphabet lessons, there
are 28 review pages. These range from letter matching, circling
the same letters in a row, and tracing letters. All student pages
in this book can conveniently be reproduced.
This book is recommended for Pre K-K. The images are fun and age
appropriate, and they include animals, objects, and people. [Note:
There is a unicorn and witch depicted for the letters U and W.]
The book is black and white, so extra coloring is encouraged. Some
of the ideas given to the teacher to use during the lesson time
are tracing the letter, saying a letter rhyme, and saying the word
and letter sound. For each letter there are also suggestions for
auditory games, where the student listens to a word being said
and decides what letter it begins with. My 5-year-old loved coloring
the letters and saying the sounds that went with them. I found
that after she had completed the book, she could recognize most
letters. The activity sheets in the back were very helpful for
review also. Learning the Alphabet is a good beginning
to having great reading skills.
Product review by Charlotte Gochnauer, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine,
LLC, August 2011
|