Little Hands-On abc's and 123's - Rainbow Letters

 

Once your child is ready to begin printing letters, a fun and artistic way to practice is to make rainbow letters. You can write out the letter yourself on a piece of paper for your child to trace, or print out alphabet templates from the internet.  I just drew our letters to save on printer ink. 

The child chooses about 8 colors and retraces the letter each time in a different color.  That's eight times her arm, hand and fingers are repeating the movement for each letter! 

Just make sure the child begins tracing the letter correctly before walking away.  Otherwise, she will be reinforcing the incorrect strokes eight times.

 

Adaptation:

If you have a younger child, not ready for printing yet, you can still draw the letters for him to color scribble on.  With J-jo, I stay with him as he colors and talk about the letter he is coloring, the sound it represents, and ask him to hear the sound in a bunch of words.  (Do you hear "ppp" in "paper", "puppy", "pen", "up", "top", "upper?") I try to select some words where you hear the sound at the beginning, some in the middle, and some at the end of the word.