Choose Alphabet Carefully
If you want an alphabet poster or set of cards that just looks cute, anything will do. But if you want something educational, you need to look closely. There are thousands of cute alphabets out there, but many do not do a good job of teaching letter name and letter sound. If you have read research describing the benefits of mnemonic alphabets, then be aware that this means the letter is part of a picture, not just printed on top of a picture, or next to it, nor not with something crawling up on a letter, either. Finally, you should look for pictures that clearly start with the most common sound that the letter makes.
Vowels are especially tricky as you don’t want that vowel followed by a consonant that is difficult to separate from the vowel sound when saying the word. For this reason words such as alligator and ant are a poor choice, children tend to hold onto the l or n sound that follows. Letter a doesn’t sound like an l or an n. The words cloud, elephant, flamingo, flower, insect, inch, and umbrella are not good representations of the sound these words start with for the same reason.
Also, be sure the picture starts with the most common sound, or the most difficult sound to teach. Don’t choose a picture that starts with a long vowel sound such as acorn, eagle, ice cream, unicorn or unicycle unless you want to have pictures representing both sounds at the same time. The long sound will come quickly after the child masters the short vowel sound. Don’t choose pictures that start with alternate sounds either. Because of the letter’s name, I assure you kids will easily try the j sound for letter g, and conclude that letter c makes the s sound (that only happens before letters e,i, or y like cent, city and cycle). Leave that lesson for later and make sure the child masters the hard sounds in goat and cat first. So don’t choose an alphabet with a giraffe or a centipede. Don’t choose words that start with ch, sh, or th either, these are different sounds. For example, chicken or ship do not work for c or s.
Some consonants tend to alter the pure vowel sound as well. The word egg, for example, often sounds like it starts with a long a sound because of how we pronounce the g in our mouths. And, by now, you can clearly understand why vowel teams don’t work for vowels either: neither orange nor owl lead to the short vowel sound of letter o. Then there’s the problem with r-controlled vowels: urchin for u definitely doesn’t produce a short u sound.
Finally, it’s really hard to come up with pictures for x. If you pay attention as you pronounce xylophone, you will quickly understand that it starts with the sound of letter z. How about X-ray? It actually starts with a short e sound “ex” instead of the “ks” sound that is accurate. That’s why I’ve chosen a word that ends with letter x. It has to be taught carefully.
I’ve put a great deal of thought and careful design into my alphabet. I made sure the pictures teach the letter sound they represent.
