Toddlers need bright visuals to learn. Colorful alphabet picture books introduce them to a world of images and words. These picture books can teach toddlers the alphabet using colors, shapes, sounds, animals and numbers.
Learning the alphabet should not be limited to inside the house. Playing the Alphabet Game, a variation of I Spy, in the car during road trips can entertain and instruct. For example, a parent asks the child to search for the letter A, and the child looks out the window at billboards, bumper stickers, license plates and street signs. Once the child spots the letter, he begins to search for the next.
Parents can encourage learning by making the entire day about the alphabet. For example, parents can bake cookies and then ask their toddlers to help them decorate the cookies with an alphabet theme. The children will taste the cookies, observe the different-colored frostings, which will serve as visual reminders, and use manipulatives (the tube or spoon and candy decorations), so this activity will help toddlers to form sensory connections (taste, sight and touch) with the alphabet. And since children love cookies, this activity will (in their minds) connect fun with learning. Before eating the cookies, parents can add a fourth sense, hearing, to the activity by singing the alphabet and talking with the children about what letters are on each cookie.
Rap music can help your toddler remember the alphabet. According to Have Fun Teaching, a teaching resource website, parents can utilize rhyme as a mnemonic device to trigger their toddler's memory skills and dance to link rhythm with learning. For example, you and your toddler can sing the Alphabet Song, a rap song in which you sing the letters of the alphabet in order. The song emphasizes not only the order of the letters but also the sounds. Rapping the Alphabet Song with your toddler while getting dressed in the morning, taking a bath and brushing teeth can bring the alphabet to life in your child's mind.