Familiarize the students with the alphabet through books, flashcards and other methods. Display a poster of the alphabet with both upper and lower case letters in the classroom.
Teach the alphabet song. Enunciate each letter and sing slow enough so that the children can distinguish each letter's sound, such as with "L," "M," "N" and "O." Point to each letter as you sing.
Discuss the shapes of the letters with the preschoolers. Introduce uppercase letters first, as they are not as similar to each other as lowercase letters are. Point out that an "A" looks like a triangle, an "O" is a circle, an "S" has curves while a "Z" is lines. Also explain how some letters look alike, such as "M" and "W" or "O" and "Q."
Introduce one new letter each week. Wait a few weeks between introducing letters that look alike to prevent confusion. For each week, do many different activities that focus on the shape and sound of that letter.
Continue practicing letters each week as you add new letters, so that after 26 weeks, the students will be practicing all of the letters of the alphabet. This ensures that they do not forget letters that have already been covered.
Provide the students with their own mini-book of the week's letter. Children enjoy making their own books, and the books, like those by KidZone, reiterate sounds as well as printing the letters.
Use tracer pages, such as those by DLTK Teach (see Resource 2), to encourage the children to practice writing the letters by tracing the lines. The website 4 A's Children's World (see Resource 3) offers printables with arrows depicting how to write the letters. Additionally, the dotted letter grows lighter, encouraging the child to write on his own.
Provide the children with worksheets that offer blank writing space as soon as they've grown comfortable tracing the letter (see Resource 4). Encourage the children to practice writing their letters in the spaces, just as they had with the tracers.