| Teaching your young child the alphabet should be a | | | | Your food lessons plans can be as complicated or as |
| high priority. Your child should not wait until preschool | | | | simple as you would like. |
| or kindergarten to learn their letters. Knowledge of | | | | Initially you may choose to simply serve foods that |
| their ABCs is one of the prime indicators of reading | | | | begin with the "letter of the day", such as B for |
| success for children. | | | | Banana and A for Apple and M for Marshmallow and |
| When you work on the alphabet with your child | | | | so on. |
| make sure the child can recognize all the letters of | | | | As your child grows more adept at the alphabet then |
| the alphabet both in order and out of sequence plus | | | | you can have the child tell you what letters are on |
| both upper and lower case. In addition, as the child | | | | her plate, such as S for Spaghetti or E for Eggs. |
| grows more comfortable with the letters begin | | | | While most parents don't encourage their children to |
| introducing the various sounds that go along with the | | | | play with their food you can make an exception for |
| letters. It easy to then take a step closer to reading | | | | certain lessons. Make homemade pretzels or |
| by naming words that also begin with that letter or | | | | breadsticks in the shape of various letters. Use icing |
| sound. | | | | to decorate cookies or cupcakes with letters. |
| While many parents succumb to the temptation of | | | | Allowing children to experience the alphabet through |
| buying expensive learning aids these are not | | | | taste, touch, and manipulation will help cement the |
| necessary and may well provide more distraction | | | | knowledge. |
| than aid for the learning process. Instead simply | | | | The truth is that the best way to teach your child |
| invest in a set of plastic refrigerator magnets and call | | | | the alphabet is to make is a regular part of your daily |
| it a day. Coloring sheets are available for free on the | | | | life. If your child experiences the alphabet in various |
| internet so why spend a lot of money on expensive | | | | ways and through a variety of methods then they |
| programs? | | | | will be more confident of their knowledge of their |
| The best, and cheapest, method is simply using the | | | | ABCs and will have a much easier time building on |
| world around you and simple, familiar items available | | | | that knowledge as they develop other emergent |
| at home. One fun easy method is to use food. You | | | | literacy skills. Giving your son an apple and |
| have food in your kitchen and you need to feed | | | | incorporating that apple into a lesson about the letter |
| your child several times a day so why not combine | | | | A will feed both his brain and his body. |
| lessons with snacks and meals? | | | | |