The first step in teaching the alphabet to preschoolers is teaching them how to recognize the shapes of the different letters. Use a master sheet featuring each letter of the alphabet and a corresponding picture. Provide students with their own worksheet with clearly marked lines dividing each letter. Cut the letters out along the lines and instruct students to match the cut out letters with the master sheet. Each time they have made a match, have them glue the cut out letter in place.
Teach students that each letter has both an uppercase and a lowercase version. To help reinforce this concept, use letter mats with uppercase letters printed on them. Provide students with sheets with lowercase versions of the letters with clear dividing lines between the letters. Cut out the letters along the lines for the children and then have then match the lowercase letters with the uppercase letters on the mat and glue them in place. This activity can be reversed with a mat with lowercase letters and a cut-out sheet containing the uppercase letters.
When students have become familiar with recognizing the different letters you can challenge them to place the letters in alphabetical order. Students should be given a worksheet with letters clearly divided by lines. Have students glue cut outs of each letter in alphabetical order on a blank sheet of paper. Have the children glue letters in batches of five or six, since trying to organize 26 letters can be difficult.
After mastering letter recognition, children can be taught the sounds of the letters. To accomplish this with a cut and glue project, provide students with cut out pictures to glue onto a separate sheet of paper underneath the letter that the image starts with. For example, an apple would be glued under the letter A. An alternative to this project is to ask students to use pictures from old magazines that begin with a specified letter and glue these onto a worksheet.