ABC'S Suggestions??

[bigmoose70]

Hi my 5 yr old is having a hard time learning his letters and sounds. He gets so angry when we sit to work on them. Does anyone have any learning techniques for this?

[fruitful]

My son in in Kinder and my daughter is in Pre K doing Kinder work.   We started school this year on August 15th and in the first few weeks, my son was very frustrated as well with his letters and sounds.  Since he is very mechanical and purpose driven, I had to show him that there was a purpose to knowing the sounds of letters, to sound out words to read.  Soon I realized that if he recognizes the sounds in words, the sounds were more important than knowing the names of the letters.  Sure enough, he loved the exercises in circling the beginning letter by hearing the sounds in the picture (a picture of a dog and multiple choice: L, D, S)  He aced every test of doing that.  Now, after 7 weeks of school, he is doing very well with the sounds, we have accomplished about 15 letters and the names of the letters have come with all the reviewing.  Our curriculum teaches the vowels first and then consanants and we are reading 3 letter words with the short vowel sounds.  I encourage you not to be frustrated and know that there are times to teach, write and review and then play a game of ball toss into different bowls that have a letter taped in them and then ask him to tell you the sound and name.  The games broke the frustration between my children and me.  Good Luck!!!

[dalynnrmc]

We don't sit - we stand.

The first thing we do, at the beginning of the first school day of the week, is turn on the letter people video at YouTube for that week's letter. (I'm sure you can search out "letter people" on YouTube and find them. Someone has uploaded ALL of the songs from the old tv show!)
After that, we glue something tactile to an outline of the letter. (I get my oulines from Hubbard's Cupboard, but you can print "outline" in just about any font on your word processor at a huge size and get the same effect.) They do this while I keep the music playing, and then they paint or color the character on a printed sheet.

After their interest is piqued like this, we read a book or two and then watch a video related to the letter. (This week is T. We're studying tigers, trains, teeth, and the number two. We read three books on trains. The last one was The Polar Express, and then we followed up with the movie by the same title.) All of that sparks enough interest for the rest of the week. "It's Mr. T time! Let's learn about t-t-t-t-tigers!"
As I said, we don't sit to do much of anything. My kiddos are very kinesthetic and visual, and all about movement and music. So it's what I use. Have you looked into learning styles at all? It's been a tremendous help here. My kids are three and four. (I also have an eight year old, and we've only been hsing for just over a year.)

Hope this all helps! Let me know if I can be of more assistance!

[Goldlyfriends]

bigmoose70 maybe you need to slow it down a bit start with the sounds first. praying that your son do well he sitll young he will be ok just keep work with him.be bless