Teaching the Alaphabet

I have been trying to teach Sophia the alphabet for a long time, but for some reason she has been having a really hard time remembering the letters. I learned pretty quickly that the approach of just going through the entire alphabet was just NOT working for her. She never remembered what any of the letters were and would guess "p" for every letter. 

After a very frustrated mommy and Sophie, daddy suggested only doing part of the alphabet at a time. So we tried just going over the first half. Even after a few days of that, she still wasn't remembering anything but "h". So again, it was time for a new approach before the both of us just gave up completely. She knows the song really well, so I had organized the letters in order and as she sang it, she pointed to each letter. We would do this 3-4 times a day, and now she remembers a few more letters, but we are still having more trouble than I ever thought we would.

Today I found a resource that I believe is going to help a ton. http://www.themeasuredmom.com/letter-a-activities/. This is a mom whose 3rd child had issues with learning the alphabet. She has a ton of free printables for each letter on her site. She also does "letter of the week". I started this today with Sophie, and after just 1 day she is remembering "a", one of the letters she never remembered. 

This activity is "A is for apple" the kids color in the circles. (Bret doesn't really follow directions or color well, so his is just all scribbled, but Sophie did awesome.)

This activity she uses in a sensory bin, but Sophie gets easily distracted and I didn't want her attention divided between the activity itself and sensory play. Instead I laid out all the pictures and I asked her what each one was, once she answered I put the word above it (some she didn't know, like acrobat). After that we talked about how each word starts with A. Then I had her point out all the a's to me in each word. She did so well, she didn't miss any of the a's.

This activity is the "A book", it has little tunes/songs about words that begin with A (they all go to the tune of songs we know). I started by singing them once, then had Sophie and Bret join me. I also asked her what the red letter was in each title (hint: it's the A). Sophie loved this activity, she loves to sing. I will keep doing this, introducing a new letter of the week each week. Today we started with our normal singing and pointing at the letter eggs a couple times through, then added the letter of the week activities into it. I am really hoping this is as promising as it seems. Sophie seems to really have trouble with her letters, but she has no problems with her numbers.

** All the printables (aside from the eggs) were printed from http://www.themeasuredmom.com/letter-a-activities/. Go to her website to print off the free activities.