Wooden Letters resource was designed for a class of children between the age of 1.5 and 3 years old under an assumption that holding letters in their hands might make letters less abstract, and might help children see and understand the shape of an each letter thus help them with both reading and writing at the later stage of their life.
These particular wooden letters I asked to be made were generated during my first teaching year. And even though several years later it was drawn to my attention that teaching children capital letters first rather than starting right away with the small (lowercase) ones is not necessary, I was still left with some interesting observations from it all.
Though the children were of very young age, placing tangible wooden letters in their kindergarten setting did two valuable things. It introduced them to letters, something we all nowadays know is important and can be done at an early stage of life, and another thing this did, it surrounded children with sounds. The latter might come across as too obvious of a statement but you have to keep in mind how small these children were. Clearly pronounced phonetic sounds of alphabet is not something you can find everywhere around. Adding an interaction with the carer to the experience and connecting that sound with both a full word and a shape, is not something that should be underestimated either.
The role of the teacher with this particular resource is to react whenever a child picks up the wooden letter. Depending on the letter child holds in their hands, the teacher may say to them:
S like Sun...
M like Mummy...
D like Daddy...
Oh, and that's Your letter! K like Klara. Isn't it?
Some children make connections between the shape and the sound of certain letters surprisingly quickly, others don't. Some might think these letters are better when put to a different use. Such thing frequently happened to the L and T letter in my classroom with 2 year old children. These can easily be mistaken for hammers. O might be perfect for earrings and bracelets, and so on. But this I leave for some other time and for some other discussions.
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