Chalkboard Letter Drills

I sat down with McKenna (20 months) the other day determined to make some progress on her telling me what letter I wrote on the chalkboard. As we got started, I really noticed that she couldn't say many of the letters well. So I changed my goal.

I wrote each letter of the alphabet--one at a time.

I started with A. It doesn't matter what you start with. Going A-Z works for me.

I said, "This is an A. Can you say A?" She would then do her best to repeat whatever I had just said. Some letters she got perfectly. If that was the case, I told her, "Good job! A!" then erased it and wrote the next letter.

If she didn't get it right, however, I repeated the letter. "L." I then pointed to my mouth while I said the letter so she could get a visual on what her mouth should be doing while she said the letter. Sometimes, like with the L, I said, "watch my tongue" in which case she of course started trying to grab my tongue.

As we did this, she became better at mimicking my sounds. I also noticed that there were certain letters she said very wrong but in a very certain way. This helps me know better what she is trying to say when she "babbles."

Sitting at the chalkboard for this was a nice setting. We could turn and look at each other and turn and look at the chalkboard. It gave her a focal point, and it also was interesting to her. She wouldn't have enjoyed it much if I had just sat in front of her. The chalkboard is a fun item.

You can take the same idea and extend it to be appropriate for whatever your child is working on--right on up to writing words.