How to Use Shapes to Teach Letters to your Preschooler
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Preschoolers are the fastest learners and with all the energy and development they are going through, teaching them can be very rewarding. At around age 3, a preschooler will already recognise shapes; making it a great age to teach your little one the alphabet! Let us look at how you can use simple shapes to teach your preschooler the alphabet.
Your little preschooler is at an age where he is eager to learn every day. Each day is filled with curiosity, learning and associating and every new object, word or sound is being listened to carefully in an attempt to grasp it. While attempting to teach your little one alphabets, there are many ways to successfully do so.
1. Read
Reading nursery rhymes, books, picture books or any book gets your child familiar with the sounds of alphabets and even the way the shapes look. Up to the months leading to preschool age, keep reading and singing along to the alphabet song.
2. Name First
A good way to teach your little one the art of writing letters, start with his name. By now he already knows how his name sounds and once you are slowly done writing down his name, he will be motivated to break it down, eventually understanding each letter of his name.
Do not be disheartened if your preschooler hasn’t picked up letters yet. The poor baby has to learn the shapes, names and sounds of 26 letters, all different from each. If you count upper case and lower case, that is actually 52 shapes in a small duration of time. That is tough for a 3 year old.
Using Shapes To Teach Your Preschooler Letters
Ideally at age 2 or 3 you can introduce shapes to your preschooler. Learning shapes is easier than letters and can aid the learning of the alphabet. Start by identifying and saying out loud all the shapes you see around you. You can begin with simple shapes like circles, squares and triangles and gradually move on to more complex shapes like ovals, stars and diamonds.
Once your preschooler has picked these up well, you can begin to show him that an ‘A’ looks like a triangle. Knowing shapes makes it a lot easier for your child to pick up the way an alphabet looks. So make use of his shape knowledge and teaching him to recognize alphabets gets a lot easier than if he didn’t already know shapes.
Ideally a preschooler would be able to pick letters up before he heads to preschool but if you have got a slow learner at hand, do not pressurize him. With patience and practice, he too will match up to his other preschool buddies and this hurdle will be way past you.
