When kids start to show interest in learning their letters and letter sounds. Do you teach uppercase or lowercase letters first? Learn the advantages of teaching letter formation correctly as well as which letters to teach first in handwriting.
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This is a question I get all the time when parents are asking me for advice on how to homeschool their child at home.
When should child know lowercase letters?
We are always so keen to begin teaching them uppercase and lowercase letters.
However, kids at the age of 3 and 4 aren’t developmentally ready to form the lowercase letters.
The curves in the letters are actually not easy for a child at that age to understand and form.
Letter formation alphabet road task cards.
This is why I usually hand out pre writing basic lines that I use with my preschoolers to get them forming these lines before teaching them letter formation.
At this age, its more important to teach letter sounds, letter recognition and identification.
Activities like letter crafts and letter matching games are always a great idea at this age.
Why teach uppercase letters first
Preschool kids can easily form the letters in uppercase format when they are between the ages of 4 and 5.
They can learn this because of the way the uppercase letters are formed. With straight lines.
There aren’t any curves.
Kids at this age are just learning to form straight lines.
So it might be a good idea to introduce them to the most common letters first like A, T, and I.
Alphabet formation practice using cards and a salt tray.
You can create learning environments and invitation to play ideas with just magnetic letters and sensory bins.
Add these letters in and have the child look for them in the bin.
They can also match these letters to a print out, like the one about matching letters on a mat right here.
Preschool alphabet chart matching mat.
Overall I would recommend starting with uppercase letters and the most commonly used letters first, like letters in their names, then lowercase letters.
I would recommend though, when teaching letters in their name, that you start with how it is written. Capital letter first, then the rest in lowercase letters.
Once they reach kindergarten, it can be a hard habit to break when they are writing their names in all uppercase letters.
Name writing printable mats in editable format.
