Help teaching son letters/numbers

[RadioFanatic]

I'm at a loss and would appreciate some help. My three and a half year old DS just will not learn his letters/numbers. He knows the alphabet song and can count to 20 and verbally spell his first name, but just refuses to have anything to do with letter/number visual recognition. I've tried games, reading pointing to words, puzzles and everything is a fight from him. I don't fight back bc I don't want this to be traumatic with him, but I'm at a loss. I know he is smart, his vocabulary is amazing and he is good at strategizing already (which is scary for me), and can count like 1 +1 equals 2, up to ten, but this is something he is refusing to learn. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[VeroBeachGirl]

I really like the leap frog dvds. The letter factory especially. My daughter is the same age as your son and she is reading 3 letter words. I think it has a lot to do with this video series.
They have great ones for number recognition as well.

 

[mjkacmom]

Mine learned when they were 2, thanks to Leap Frog Letter Factory and Number Factory DVD,s. The Leap Frog Refridgerator word maker helped, too. Can't go wrong with Leap Frog.

 

[RMulieri]

Relax-This is not all that unusual ..Some kids take awhile with this.Heck my daughter had issues well into Kindergarten identifying numbers and letters, though she excelled with most things.Nothing to stress about.The LeapFrog Dvds do help( though even with them and Baby Einstein we still had issues).Your son will get it! My daughter is now in 2nd grade and is in the top in her class with Math and reading levels.

 

[sharonabe]

I agree with RMulieri....he's ONLY 3 1/2. Give it a break for awhile, buy some of the DVDs and play them with no expectations or "teaching" and see what he does. At the end of 1st grade my DS was barely putting words together. At the end of 2nd grade, he was reading chapter books. Yours will get there too, but give him some time.

 

[EKW]

1. Play games with them. Go Fish. Match Game.

2. Buy a poster with the letters. I love AlphaBat...the baseball player's make the letters with their bodies. Every night after your son's bath, stop at the poster and sing the ABC song with him, having him touch the letters as he sings the song. Make this a game. When my kids were little the poster hung right outside the bathroom door.

3. Fill a cookie tray with powdered jello, whipped cream, or sweetened kool-aid. Take turns with your son...let him tell you a letter, you draw it, then you give him a letter and he draws it.

4. Do art projects with him. Make the letter M out of macaroni. The letter B out of beans. The letter S out of salt, etc.

5. Get tons of alphabet books from the library. Let him point to the letter and name it, then you read the text.

6. Let him make his own alphabet book. Buy a scrapbook, put the letters on the pages. Then, as he learns each letter, reward him by letting him find the letter in old magazines, newspapers, cut it out, and decorate the page. (This is best if you use small scrapbooks/journals...don't get huge pages and don't expect him to find pictures that start with the letter.)

One aside...naming letters is a VERY basic skill, and not the only one your child needs to know. He also should be able to segment, blend, and rhyme. Look for phonemic awareness activities on the net. He might find these activities to be more fun. They are the type of thing you can do in the car.

Many reading programs today start with sound and add letters later. This works from what the child already knows to information that is new.

Good for you for being involved...be sure to keep it fun!!!

 

[CarlisleMom]

Check out www.starfall.com

My school district uses this in grades K-1. The website is free. Teaches letters, word families in a fun way. The kids all love it. My DD use to come home from school asking to play on this website.

 

[KathleensKid]

My kids love this site for playing alphabet games on the computer:

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f

If you go to the "main index" there are other reading games.

Look for sites like this for inspiration. I love this site. She has activities for all the upper and lower case letters.

http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/letter-of-the-week

And remember that you don't have to go in ABC order. When my son was little his favorite letters were R and J. I have no idea why. We did alot of R and J activities. Then we moved on to the letters in his name.

We read tons of books, had the big alphabet floor tiles, had alphabets on the wall (buy from the teacher store or office supply store), had alphabet puzzles, alphabet letters for the bathtub, alphabet on the fridge, etc. I never sat him down and said "we will now be sitting here until you learn your letters." We just did occasional fun activities involving a letter or letters. The letters were just all over the house in practically every room. By constant exposure, the kids learned them pretty easily. The best thing to do is relax. Let him take his time. There is no rush at all to learn them. Some kids will learn them early b/c they want to. Some kids will learn them later. At 3 1/2 it is no big deal.

 

[KathleensKid]

Check out www.starfall.com

My school district uses this in grades K-1. The website is free. Teaches letters, word families in a fun way. The kids all love it. My DD use to come home from school asking to play on this website.

I was typing my response when you posted yours. Great minds thing alike.

 

[Princess Roo]

He's got time! No need to worry about letters until the school year before kindergarten. Don't push it or he'll be resentful. My son had no interest until after he was 4. But by kindergarten he was at the top of his class. Just had to wait until he was developmentally ready.

 

[cheerbop]

Another vote for the LeapFrog DVDs! Awesome!

 

[carseatmommy]

I'm a preschool teacher with a BS in Psychology and a 2nd BS in Early Childhood Education. He will get it in his own time. He's ONLY 3 1/2.

Keep exposing him to them and doing literacy and math skill activities:
Read to him
Do nursery rhymes, songs and finger plays(look up Dr. Jean on youtube)
play memory
count things(not just saying the numbers by rote), touch the things he as counting
work with shapes and talk about what makes it that shape---A triangle is a triangle because it has 3 sides.
work on sorting, by color, shape, size
play with nesting cups or blocks

Susan

 

[mjantz]

I have to add to the 'relax'. I teach K & I had kids who didn't know letters or letters sounds. By the end of the year they had it. It probably has no 'value' for him yet. He's too busy being 3.
I'm a huge fan of a 'print rich environment'. Label stuff. Give him options to label things in his room. But most of all don't stress. At his age learning should be fun so he doesn't know he's learning.

 

[MSSANDRA]

It's All ok

Preschool director here. He will be fine. My DN would not even try to learn his letters until kindergarten, he is top of his class and going to be a doctor!

Learning letters at 3 is for parents bragging rights, it is no indication of future performance in school. Letters are symbols for sounds and little brains just have to mature to a point to being able to think in non-concret terms. Some times that is two and sometimes as late as 7!

Lots of good advice;

More:
READ READ READ to you child. Read anything and everything. Picture books, poems, newspaper stories that might hold his interest.

Point out letters in a fun way that matter to him. The M in mcdonalds, the S on a stop sign. Simply tell him what they are, don't quiz him all the time.

Put magnetic letters in the kitchen; "oh the H fell off, can you put it back up."

Some kids love the leapster type games and if he does that is great but my boys did not.


Avoid worksheets and flash cards and just enjoy having fun together.

A year of preschool is great before he starts kindergarten and that should give him all the formal instruction he needs to have. He still may or may not learn them in preschool, depends on that little brain of his!!

 

[disykat]

It's All ok

Learning letters at 3 is for parents bragging rights, it is no indication of future performance in school. Letters are symbols for sounds and little brains just have to mature to a point to being able to think in non-concret terms. Some times that is two and sometimes as late as 7!

Great post! Op, strong problem solving skills and a good vocabulary are WAAAAY more indicative of future success than early letter recognition.

 

[nessz79]

It's All ok

Preschool director here. He will be fine. My DN would not even try to learn his letters until kindergarten, he is top of his class and going to be a doctor!

Learning letters at 3 is for parents bragging rights, it is no indication of future performance in school. Letters are symbols for sounds and little brains just have to mature to a point to being able to think in non-concret terms. Some times that is two and sometimes as late as 7!

Lots of good advice;

More:
READ READ READ to you child. Read anything and everything. Picture books, poems, newspaper stories that might hold his interest.

Point out letters in a fun way that matter to him. The M in mcdonalds, the S on a stop sign. Simply tell him what they are, don't quiz him all the time.

Put magnetic letters in the kitchen; "oh the H fell off, can you put it back up."

Some kids love the leapster type games and if he does that is great but my boys did not.


Avoid worksheets and flash cards and just enjoy having fun together.

A year of preschool is great before he starts kindergarten and that should give him all the formal instruction he needs to have. He still may or may not learn them in preschool, depends on that little brain of his!!

Great advice! All kids learn at different times. Both of my boys are doing very well in school right now but they both began letter identification and blending at totally different times. Same thing with numbers and math!

 

[SLK1]

I pointed out the number 8 to my then 3-year-old and asked her what number it was. She proudly said, "a rectangle", and off she went. She has zero interest in learning. She's the fourth and trust me, I'm not worried AT ALL!!

 

[dragonfly08]

DD #2 will be 5 next month, and will start kindergarten less than two weeks later. She can identify all of her letters, but can't write about half of them and when asked does not identify most letter sounds. I don't know if it's just her exerting control by not doing it when I ask, or if she really doesn't know them. Either way, I'm not worried. She is highly resistant to learning *anything* with me, but preschool, which she started at 3 1/2, managed to teach her quite a bit including how to write her own name (and this was a play-based program that did absolutely NO workbooks, worksheets, or any structured activities to teach writing...just exposing her to the letters through books and posters and blocks plus encouraging her to put her name on her own artwork did the trick over time). I'm very confident that getting back into the classroom and starting a kindergarten curriculum, which here at least does not expect her to be able to write or know all of the sounds at the start of the year, will work wonders and by the end of the year she'll be right where all of her peers are.

 

[saraheliz]

Is he in preschool at all?

I only ask because my DD was the same way at 3. I asked her pedi about it at her 3 year appointment and she kindly reminded me that not that long ago, learning your letters was a kindergarten skill, and as long as she's on track with everything else, not to stress about it.
She went to school 3 months later and learned them all very quickly. Peer pressure works. Seriously, she didn't want anything to do with letters with me- even if I snuck it in a game- but from her teachers? No problem.

 

[jodls01]

My dd enjoys the alphabet songs and sounds in youtube.