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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Teaching Amanda Her ABCs

Most of you know that Amanda turned 5 this year.
I was concerned that she had to remain in the
playgroup another year before graduating to
Kindergarten (Grade R in South Africa) and
that she'll only be in Grade 1 when she's 6
turning 7.

From what I understand, that's a

whole year later than in the States.
So, I decided to start teaching her at home,
after school. I only spend about 5 - 10 minutes
with her, but I've seen that it makes a difference.

Today I'm sharing about 3 of the books that
I've been using with her. We have several
other ABC resources too. Some are
battery operated with sound. I like variety,
so I don't focus on the same books or
teach with the same method every day.
I also like to be spontaneous. Here's
a peek into a few of our lessons. Enjoy!


First Fun ABC is published by Miles Kelly.
I like this book, because Amanda gets to
practice the alphabet at the top of the page.
Also, the letter that the page is focusing on
is highlighted in the alphabet row.

I noticed that Amanda
was running the letters L - N as one
word, so here we practiced slowing
the famous alphabet song down and
saying each letter name carefully.



I got My First ABC Glitter Book on sale.
It's published by Hinkler Books and they have
a whole series, including Colours and Numbers.
Amanda commented that it was for babies.
I liked the shiny pages. I also knew that
even though it's in a toddler's book style,
it's still right for her age.

I like that each picture has the upper case
and lower case letter. I think it's better
if kids learn both from the beginning.
What I didn't like is that the letter A
on the inside of the book stood for
"alarm clock" and R stood for "rubber
duck." Amanda saw the clock and said,
"A for clock" and saw the duck and said,
"R for duck." This was too confusing.



Amanda got this wonderful Animals, Wipe Clean,
Learn to Draw Activity Book for her birthday
a year or two ago. It's published by Priddy
Books. She used her marker until it ran dry,
so the one in the photo is not the one that
it originally came with, although it does
look similar. This book also comes in a
series, including Letters and Numbers.

What makes this book so versatile is that
it not only teaches drawing, it also teaches
how to write the alphabet in upper case
and lower case letters.

I got Amanda
to practice some of these letters on a
white board that we could wipe clean
and use again and again.
We could have used the book
for this, but I wanted her to
see how the letters make words.

In the last picture, Amanda had a word
with a missing letter. Each time I gave
her a different missing letter for the same
word, to help her see what letter was
missing and to put it in the right place. 

If your child isn't old enough to write yet,
you could simplify this exercise using magnetic
fridge letters. Let your child place the
correct letter in the missing space.




I found this neat ABC internet resource today.
It's called ABCya and has free games and apps
from Grade K to Grade 5. I'll let Amanda
check it out with me tomorrow. Maybe
you've already heard of it. I'm living in a
corner of South Africa, so I'm still
discovering these things.

I'm linking with the Kid Lit Blog Hop.


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