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Teaching the alphabet to your 3-year-old

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Are you teaching the alphabet to your 3-year-old? Follow along with us!

These 3-year-old activities are great for learning the alphabet!

It’s easy to find alphabet activities.

If you search Pinterest, you’ll easily find a huge variety of alphabet activities to do with preschoolers. From printable packs to sensory bins, there is no shortage of ideas!

But how do you know what to try?

If the activity frustrates your child, how should you handle it?

Should 3-year-olds do handwriting pages? Lots of crafts? Worksheets?

Follow along with us!

I did Letter of the Week with my 3-year-old and shared our activities each week. By taking a peek at each week, you’ll get a good feel for what alphabet learning can look like with a 3-year-old.

Plus, you’ll find lots of hands-on activities (including free printables!) along the way.

Just click on the image to take you to each letter.

Looking for a done-for-you alphabet curriculum?

Alphabet Curriculum for Preschool

$29.00

Our curriculum includes lessons for teaching both upper and lowercase letter names and sounds. You’ll get three lessons per letter, built-in review, simple handwriting practice, rhyming, syllable counting, phonemic awareness, and a whole lot more!

Buy Now

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Reader Interactions

30 Comments

  1. Sandi Davison

    No one every learned to read by learning the names of the letters… but by the letter sounds. Lower case letters are most useful, but for some reason, a lot of children are taught only the capital letters.

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      I stand by my belief that learning letter names is helpful for many reasons, although obviously learning letter sounds is essential for reading. Researcher Marilyn Adams talks about this a lot in her book, Beginning to Read. Quote (p. 112): “There exists a wealth of evidence that the speed and accuracy with which young readers can recognize individual letters is a critical determinant of their reading proficiency and future growth.”

      Reply to this comment

  2. Mel Bass

    I am looking for a 3 year old curriculum but want to make sure I only get short vowel sounds first. Does you curriculum contain both short and long vowel pages or just one or the other? I get frustrated when I purchase something and I get some short and some long vowels. I would like to have both since I can choose when to teach each. This is a real problem when you purchase letter borders and they are not consistent.

    Thanks

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna G

      HI Maryann! Some of them are, and some of them aren’t. I actually completely redid the letter of the week ebook after I did this free series, and I would say it contains a greater variety of printables than what you see above.

      Reply to this comment

  6. Sandy

    What order do you teach the letters in? Like the curved, c, o, e type compared to the straight, k, b,f, t, l type then ones with humps h, m, u, n types, and finally tail types p, g, y, q. Hopefully that makes sense.
    Thanks

    Reply to this comment

  10. Ummara

    Im little confuse regarding alphabets n phonics. I mean my she is 3.5 yrs old n she knows all the alphabets now i teach her phonics from a to j but i show her upper case A as A alphabet n then i show her lower case a as phonic n i say A makes a sound of ah (a). Am i doing right? I feel that im doing wrong because this way she is learning that uppercase r alphabets n lowercase r phonics. Is it right?

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      I don’t think this is a problem if she doesn’t have trouble remembering both upper and lowercase. You might want to play games where she matches the upper and lowercase forms. Personally I associate the sound with both the upper and lowercase letters, and I focus on letter names before sounds. However, some educators start with just the lowercase and teach them as sounds instead of using the letter names. I think with continued exposure your daughter will put the pieces together.

      Reply to this comment

  13. Meeghan

    Love all the ideas you are sharing! Also when teaching the alphabet, make sure you are teaching both the upper and lower case letters. We also believe you should explicitly teach the confusing fonts (like the two lower case letter a, or g, or upper case I – looking like a lower case L).

    Reply to this comment

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