Teaching Letters and Sounds to Preschoolers

When I work with children as young as three years old on correcting error sounds, I am very aware that because they are not yet readers, they do not have the same understanding of sounds and letters that older children have. Some children are aware of letters and may know the alphabet song. The connection between a letter and a sound is not typically something that children learn until they get to pre-k or kindergarten. Letters and sounds are different concepts and I think it's as important to teach the connection between the two as it is to teach the letters themselves.  All parents try to teach their children the alphabet song.  I think this is great.  What could make this even better is to be sure that they pair what the kids are singing to a picture of the letters as they are singing them.  If there is no concrete connection made between the auditory letter and the visual letter, then the children are just learning a random song.  All children should have an alphabet poster or chart of some kind that should be brought out when the ABC song is done.  They should be taught to touch each letter as they are singing it.  This will avoid that single "LMNOP" cluster that they clearly think is one word.  The same chart can be used when teaching the children that each letter makes a sound.  I like to use a song that I heard in the pre-k classroom with all of my kids in speech therapy.  I take the sound that they are targeting and put it in the song.  The song is to the tune of "hot cross buns" and it would go like this: "D says duh, D says duh, every letter makes a sound and D says duh."  This can be used with every sound.  I tend to use the short vowel sounds when doing the vowels, since when vowels are long  they say their own letter name. When doing vowels use short sounds "a" (as), "e" (bed), "i" (in), "o" (on), "u" (up).  These tend to be harder for kids to learn for reading and writing and any jump start is helpful.  The pre-k classroom picks one letter each week to target and then does activities all week with that sound. Art activities, searching for things that start with that sound etc.  I suggest that parents do the same thing.  As the weeks progress, you add to the length of the sound song and mix the letters up so they are not learned only in order.  This work on pairing sounds and letters will give your child a great jump on early reading skills.  We tend to forget that just because a child can sing the alphabet song does not mean that he  knows his sounds and letters.