Swinging the Alphabet
When I was at Victoria’s Open House the teacher gave us hand outs on how to help the children learn beginning sounds. One activity was to take a letter and make up funny words to go with the sound. Victoria and I tried this. She kept say Bai Baiwaiwai or FooFoo! Immediately I thought about a funny song I learned as a child from the Three Stooges called “Swinging the Alphabet”.
I thought that I could teach her the sounds using this song. Strange? Not really. I also have a copy of lessons from a reader from the 18th century and in it they teach the sounds this way:
ab eb ib ob ub
ac ec ic oc uc
ad ed id od ud
af ef if of uf
ag eg ig og ug
and so on
Then the long sounds
BA BE BI BO BU
CA CE CI CO CU
DA DE DI DO DU
FA FE FI FO FU
GA GE GI GO GU
HA HE HI HO HU
etc
Looks like “Swinging the Alphabet”?
So Victoria and I sing the song together. She loves it and is practicing letter sounds and spelling at the same time. By the way, the song was written in 1875! And they say “The Three Stooges” isn’t educational!
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I taught Debbie the letter names and sounds using ZooPhonics. I’m not sure if you used it as a teacher here. It’s a big hit in the ESOL program. Each letter has a name, a sound, and an animal that dances. It’s neat, and very easy to remember.
Comment left on September 13, 2007 @ 11:26 am
Yeah, I know about ZooPhonics. I didn’t use it because when I was a teacher they didn’t have it for free and I couldn’t afford it. I just taught old fashioned phonics using a lot of Hop on Pop with my students.
Comment left on September 13, 2007 @ 1:00 pm