Letter T

Teaching The Letter T

You need to teach your child how to pronounce letter T first. Tell them to press the tip of their tongue at the top of their mouth, behind the front tooth. When they separate their tongue and upper mouth by pushing a little air out, they will make the letter T sound.

There are many words that start with T and here are some that your child will probably know:

Toy

Top

Ten

Tap

Try

The

You will need to be very patient when you are teaching your child the letter T. They are bound to make mistakes so be prepared for this. You will also need to be consistent, and read every day to your toddler. Letter T books can be purchased from stores and online. Your local library may have them too. Choose books that have fun drawings and nursery rhymes in them.

You can show your child the letters in their name if they have the letter T in it. These can be written out, or you can use plastic letters to do this. Point out where the letter T appears in their name. Maybe your child does not have the letter T in their name. In this case, look for names that begin with T amongst family members, or you can even use TV characters that your child will know. Spell out the letters of these names for your child.

Your child might be familiar with some of these names that start with T:

Ted

Tia

Tom

Tim

Tess

Tina

Once your child has developed an understanding of the letter T, you can introduce these more complex names that start with the letter T:

Thomas

Theresa

Tiffany

Tabatha

Theodore

Timothy

Your Child Will Learn More If You Have Fun Teaching The Letter T

Don’t make teaching a chore for your toddler. Have fun teaching T, and make sure that they enjoy the experience. They like to do fun things, and it is important to link learning with fun. This article has many ideas for letter T activities that are fun, and you can see these below. Begin by using letter T worksheets that have entertaining illustrations in them, so that your child will enjoy using them. These can be found online.

To make learning the letter T really fun, find some letter T songs that you can learn and sing together. You can find these T songs online. Another fun idea is to find and watch letter T videos with your toddler. Some of these are great fun. A lot of the letter T songs are actually videos, and you can find a good example of this below.

Doing things together is very important. Take the time out to learn and sing the letter T song together. By doing this you will build a wonderful bond with your child. They will never forget the experience, and will probably want to sing these songs with you all the time. Be willing to do this at every opportunity.

Looking For More Letter T Activities For Preschool Children?

OK so you have watched videos, sung songs and played with worksheets. What can you do now? Well you can:

Discover Things That Begin With T In Your Home

You will be surprised how many things that start with T you can find in your home. Tell your child that you must both look for these items. If you are struggling with this then what about tacos, table, tape, tarts, tea, teapot, teddy bear telephone and television? And then there is tie, toast, tomatoes, tortilla chips, top, toothbrush, towel, T shirt and tub. Make sure your child sees all the items that you find and spell out all of the letters for them.

Move on to other “T words” that your child may have heard members of your family speak, or even heard from the TV. Some examples are teeth, toes, touch, train, trick, time, this, that, tree, test, triangle, theme, there, think, two, three, trip, together, tomorrow, today and taste. You can provide real life examples of some of these words like pointing to your teeth. In other cases, use pictures to explain the meaning. Always spell the letters of the words out to your toddler.

Now you can think about words with T in them, but not words starting with T. There are thousands of words that contain the letter T, so start with the simple ones that your child may know. Examples could be stop, dot, pot, pat, cat, mat, met, it, put, cut, stew, store, spot, got, what, hot, hat, sat, item, with, late, gate and just. If your child does not know the meaning of any of these words then use real life examples or images to explain. Spell out the letters as always and show them where the letter T appears.

You do not have to restrict these “T words for kids” activities to inside the home. When you go out with your toddler, you can look for words beginning with T in stores and restaurants. Also look for words which contain the letter T. If you are in the car, then there will be plenty of street signs that have the letter T in them. Jot down all of these words so that you can spell them out to your toddler when you get back home.

Play The Animals That Start With T Game

Kids really enjoy anything to do with animals, and finding animals that begin with T will be great fun for them. There are a number of these and you can start with some they might know such as tiger, toad, turkey, tuna, turtle and tortoise. You can then tell them about the takin, tapir, tarantula, toucan, tegu, tern and topi. Show images of these animals and spell the names out in full so your child can see that they all begin with T.

There are a number of animals that have the letter T in their name but don’t begin with T. For some inspiration you can think of ant, antelope, bat, beetle, butterfly, cheetah, cockatoo, cat, elephant, goat, meerkat, rat, ocelot, ostrich, otter, parrot, hippopotamus, rattlesnake, stork and vulture. Show pictures of these animals to your child, and spell out the letters of their names so that your toddler can identify the letter T in them.

Explain To Your Child The Need For Capital Letters

Use pictures of the letter T to show both formats. These are the capital letter T (big letter T) and the small letter T (lowercase letter T). Tell them that capital letters are important, and use an example to explain this. You could tell them that when people’s names are written or typed, they always start with a capital letter.

You want your child to be able to identify the two different letter formats easily, so print out pictures of the capital T and lowercase letter T. You could just type these using a word processor, and if you do that, use a large font. Ask your child to trace around the two formats to become more familiar with them. This will help them when they start to write,

Make Sure That They Learn Letter T Phonics

Your child needs to learn about phonics to become a successful reader. Each alphabet letter, including letter T, make unique sounds which are known as phonemes. When some letters are combined they make unique phonemes as well. Your child will need to master all of these and once they do, they will be able to read easily and fluently. Please see below for more information about the letter T sounds.

English Alphabet LETTER T SOUNDS:

T  /t/:

The 20th letter in the alphabet is T and it is an unvoiced consonant that is pronounced by pushing air through the mouth and not the vocal cords. The letter sound for T is pronounced as /t/ and not “tee” or “tuh”. T is another short sound letter that cannot be drawn out without distorting its sound.

Examples:

TIN: /t/ /i/ /n/

TOP: /t/ /o/ /p/

TEA: /t/ /e/ /a/

Exercises for /t/

1. Before you begin, print a piece of paper for the Letter T/t/
2. Also print a piece of paper with the following words for T:
   TOP
   NET
   PET
   TEAM

TIPS
STAND

1. Show your child the Letter on the index card or paper and repeat the letter sound several times: T and remember not to sound like “tuh” or “tee”
2. Take time with your child to be sure the /t/ sound is pronounced correctly
3. Listen carefully as your child repeats the sound after you
4. Ask your child if different words have the /t/ sound and wait to see the response. Always repeat the word using the letter sound to be sure your child knows the sound
5. Continue to repeat other short sound I words such as TAME, TIM, TO, TAKE
6. At this point in your child’s lessons you may also want to try a few games where your child replaces a letter in one of the words to make a different word. This is called phoneme substitution and is another great way to teach your child the letter sounds:
   1. Ask your child what sound would TOP be if you replace the /p/ with a /t/? [TOT]
   2. What if you replace the /t/ with a /d/ in the word NET? [NED]
   3. How will TIPS sound if you replace the /t/ with a /p/? [DIPS]
7. Finalize the lesson by asking your child what sound the T makes, remembering that you should not make the sound “tuh” or “tee”

Use A Proven Reading Program To Teach Your Child How To Read At Home

Don’t believe that you haven’t got what it takes to teach your child how to read before they attend school. All you need are the materials and some good instructions. A proven reading program will provide these things, and guide you how to teach your child to read in small daily lessons.

There is absolutely no need to pay hundreds of dollars for a high quality reading program. Look no further than Jim Yang’s Children Learning Reading program. It is not expensive, but it is high quality. The program has many satisfied customers, who have all used this effective program to teach their children how to read. More details about Children Learning Reading can be found here.

The letter U will be easy for your child when you teach the way shown in the next section. Please click here.