WONDERING HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILD THE ALPHABET? 4 STEPS TO TEACHING YOUR CHILD SOUNDS INSTEAD.

If you are wondering how to teach your child the alphabet, please ask yourself this question: Should you? The answer is not as straightforward as you think. 

Many parents teach their children the alphabet before introducing reading skills. Many schools do, too. (Ever heard the alphabet song? Only a million times, right?) But think about it. What can a child do with the name of a letter?

​Not much. Knowing the names of the letters won't help your child learn to read. In fact, naming letters can actually create confusion, especially when you want your child to learn to read using phonics.

 What's far more important for your child to learn is the sound of each letter. English is a phonetic language, and knowing how to recognizes the sound of each letter creates a solid foundation for learning to read.

How to Teach Your Child the Alphabet by Sound! Try Our Phonics Program for Seven Days—Free.

How to Teach Your Child the Alphabet by Sound—4 Easy Steps

​Before your child can learn to read, she must be familiar with the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. Knowing the name of each letter is not necessary. In fact, throughout the process of teaching your child to read, we recommend you refer to the letters only by their sounds—never by their names.

If your child already knows the letters by name and attempts to correct you, simply say: "That's the name of this letter. Can you tell me the sound?" (If at all possible, avoid letting anyone teach your child the alphabet by naming the letters.)

In the following 4 Steps, you will see how easy it is to teach your child to read with phonics, and why learning how to teach your child to read the alphabet by sound is so important.

The first step is to teach your child the sound of each letter, but here's where you might be getting a little nervous. Many parents don't even know how to pronounce the sounds of the letters. For this reason, you will want to choose a reading program that has an audio component to pronounce the sounds for you. Work your way through each letter of the alphabet, one at a time, moving on to the next letter only when all previous letters have been memorized.
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Now it's time for your child to learn how to read. Once your child can quickly recite the sounds of each letter, she will combine those sounds to create words. Do you realize that when your child can combine c, a, and t to spell cat, she is a reader? While the process becomes more complex, learning to read never strays too far from the basic concept of building words by sounding them out.

Once your child is reading simple words by combining single letter sounds, you can move on to introduce new sounds in the form of blends (e.g. sh, ch, and th). At this point, you can see why it may be confusing if your child knows the names of these letters. All we want is for your child to identify sounds by their shapes—that is, single letters or letter combinations.

This step looks a lot like STEP 2. Once your child can recognize a variety of blended sounds, he will be able to sound out literally thousands of words. And if you want to teach him the alphabet? Go ahead! While he may no longer need it, you might enjoy singing the alphabet song together.

How to Teach Your Child the Alphabet by Sound—It's Easy!

If you are ready to start teaching your child to read using phonics, go ahead and give our program a try for free. Teach Your Child to Read™ has all the tools you need to learn how to teach your child the alphabet by sound. But don't stop there! Once your child knows the sounds, the next logical step is to start learning to read.