Letter K
Teaching The Letter K
Pronouncing the letter K is similar to the letter G. Get your child to place the rear portion of their tongue up towards the rear of their mouth. When the letter K sound is made the tongue should be slightly touching the rear of their mouth.
Here are some words starting with K that your child may already now:
Kid
Knife
Kite
Kangaroo
Kettle
Key
To teach the letter K properly to your toddler, you will need to have patience and be prepared to spend time on this each day. You can find letter K books at your local library or on sale in stores or online. Go for books that have nursery rhymes and fun illustrations in them, as this will help with the learning process.
Does the letter K appear in your child’s name? If it does then you can use some cut-out or plastic letters to spell their name out to them. Show them where the letter K appears. If they do not have a K in their name, you can use other names with the letter K. These could be family members, or the names of TV characters that your child will know.
There are quite a few names starting with K and your child maybe familiar with these:
Ken
Kim
Kay
Kelly
Karen
Keith
Here are some more challenging names that start with K:
Katherine
Kevin
Katrina
Kaitlin
Kayleigh
Kieran
Do You Want To Know The Secret To Teaching The Letter K?
The secret is really simple – make it fun. When you have fun teaching letter K with your child they will want to learn more. Fun and learning together will deliver great results, and set your child up for life linking fun with learning. There are some great examples of fun things that you can do later in this article. For now, we will discuss letter K worksheets. There are many letter K worksheets available so choose those that have funny drawings in them.
Another fun and entertaining way to learn letter K is to use letter K songs. You and your child can learn these songs together and sing them often. You can also find letter K videos which your child will enjoy watching with you. A good example of a letter K video, which is actually a letter K song, can be found below.
The most important thing here is to learn and sing the songs and watch the videos together. Your toddler will really like doing this, and it is likely that they will want to do this a lot and you will hear them say “again”, “again”. Always try to sing the songs or watch the videos when they want to do this.
Here Are Some More Fun Letter K Activities
The Animals Game
Children like animals, so you can play a game with them where you look for animals that start with the letter K. There are not very many of these, but you can start with kangaroo, koala and kiwi. There are others such as the king penguin, kingfisher and the Komodo dragon. Show pictures of these animals and spell out their names.
Now move on to animals that have a K somewhere in their name and not at the beginning. You can start off with jackal and then there is monkey, meerkat, snake, hawk and stork. There are not too many of these, but those you do find be sure to show pictures and spell out the names so your toddler can see where K occurs in the names.
Find Things In Your Home That Start With K
Finding things that start with K at home will be interesting and fun for your child. There will be a few objects that you can use here such as keys, kitchen, kiwi, ketchup, kite, knife, keyboard and kettle. Maybe you have a kitten. As always spell out the objects and show your child that they are all things that begin with K.
Continue with the K words theme by finding words that begin with K that your child may have heard you or other members of the family say. You can also use words from the TV here. There is knee, knight, king, knot, kaleidoscope, karate, kayak and kit. Use pictures or real life examples to help your child understand what these words mean, and always spell them out.
Think about K words for kids that do not begin with K but contain the letter K. What about neck, sock and cake? Then there is awake, back, black and clock. There are thousands of words that have K in them. As always, use pictures or real life examples (pointing to your neck for instance) and spell out the letters in these words, so that your toddler can see where the letter K fits in.
Don’t just confine these letter K games to the home. There will be many examples of the letter K in street signs and in stores when you are outside with your child. Whenever you see an example, point it out to your child. As they become more confident, they will point out instances of the letter K to you.
What About Uppercase And Lowercase Letter K?
It is a good idea to show pictures of the letter K in its capital letter K format (big letter K) and the lowercase letter K format (small letter K). Explain the importance of capital letters, and give an example where they are used, such as when people’s names are written.
You can get pictures of the letter K in both formats online and then print these out so your child can trace the formats. In time, they will learn to write both the capital K and the lowercase K.
Teach Your Child The Phonics Of The Letter K
There is no better way for your child to learn to read than by phonics instruction. All of the letters have individual sounds called phonemes, and it is vital that your child learn all of these including the letter K. Once they have learned all of the phonemes they will be able to create whole words by combining the sounds. There is more about the letter K sounds below.
English Alphabet LETTER K SOUNDS:
K /k/:
The 11th letter in the alphabet is J and it is an unvoiced, short sound consonant. The letters “F”, “H” and “S” are also unvoiced sounds that are created by pushing short puffs of air through your mouth. Work diligently to say the /k/ without adding “uh” to it.
Examples:
KING: /k/ /i/ /n/ /g/
KEEP: /k/ /ee/ /p/
KIND: /k/ /i/ /n/ /d/
Exercises for /j/
- Before you begin, print a piece of paper for the Letter K and k
- Also print a piece of paper with the following words for K:
KILL
KITTEN
KISS
RACK
STACK
BREAK
- Show your child the Letter on the index card or paper and repeat the letter sound several times: K
- Take time with your child to be sure the /k/ sound is pronounced correctly
- Listen carefully as your child repeats the sound after you
- Ask your child if different words have the /k/ sound and wait to see the response. Always repeat the word using the letter sound to be sure your child knows the sound
- Continue to repeat other short sound I words such as LAKE, FAKE, RAKE, BAKE
- Finalize the lesson by asking your child to tell you the sound of the letters
Teach Your Child To Read At Home With The Right Help
The point of teaching your child the letters of the alphabet is so that they can learn how to read. It may seem a daunting prospect to you at the moment, but you are the best person to teach your child how to read. You do not have to be a teacher to do this. You just need the right guidance, and you can get this from a proven reading program.
As soon as your child is able to speak they can learn to read. You may not believe this but it is true. Jim Yang taught his 3 children how to read at age 2 and he has created a proven, high quality reading program that has been used by thousands of parents all over the world. It is called Children Learning Reading. You can find out more about this inexpensive and very effective reading program here.
Help your child to learn all about the letter L by clicking through to the next section.
