Letter U

Teaching The Letter U

First you need to teach your child how to pronounce the letter U. Tell them to use the center portion of their mouth and expel the air making the letter U sound.

Some words that start with U that your toddler may have heard are:

Umbrella

Under

United

Up

University

Use

When you are teaching the letter U to your child you will need to have a lot of patience, as it is likely that they will make mistakes. Be consistent in your efforts, and read to your child each day. It is possible to buy letter U books from stores and online. Try to find books that have nursery rhymes and fun illustrations, as this will help with the learning process. Your library may have these books for you to borrow.

It is unlikely that your child will have the letter U in their name, but if they do, then spell out all of the letters using toy letters or by just simply writing them. Show your toddler where the letter U occurs. If they don’t have the letter U in their name, look for names that start with U from TV characters that your child knows or members of your family. If you find one, don’t forget to spell the letters of the name out.

Here are some names starting with U that you could use:

Una

Uma

Ursula

Umberto

Ulrich

Ulrika

Ulyssa

Unice

Unique

Unity

Upton

Uriah

Make Teaching The Letter U Fun And Your Child Will Want More

It is very important that you have fun teaching letter U to your toddler. If it is not fun for them, they will quickly switch off. Creating a link between fun and learning is very important for your child’s future success. Later on in this article, you will find some really fun letter U activities. Make a start with letter U worksheets which you can find online. Go for worksheets that have fun drawings on them, as this will be entertaining for your child.

What kind of fun do you think it would be for your child to learn and sing letter U songs with you? They will absolutely love this. There are a lot of U songs around so find some good ones. There are also letter U videos that your child will want to watch with you. A lot of letter U songs are in video format, and there is a good example of this below.

Always be prepared to sing the letter U song together with your child. They will like singing the U song with you so much, that they will ask you to sing it again and again. Make time to do this, as you will be creating a very good experience for your child that they will not easily forget.

Here Are Some Other Fun Letter U Activities For Preschool Children

So you have learned and sung the songs, played with the worksheets and watched the videos. You can now:

Look For Animals That Start With U

There are not that many animals that start with the letter U, and it is unlikely that your child will have heard of any of them. That should not stop you playing this great game. Tell your toddler about the uakari, Uganda kob, uinta ground squirrel, Ulysses butterfly, umbrella bird, upupa, urial and uromastix. Show pictures of all these animals and spell out their names so that your child can see they begin with U.

An easier task is to find some animals that have the letter U in their name but not at the start. There are some easy ones such as penguin, squirrel, butterfly, emu, hippopotamus, hummingbird, iguana, jaguar, ladybug, lemur, marsupial, orang-utan, porcupine, possum, toucan and turtle. Make sure that you spell all of these names out so that your child can see where the letter U is placed.

Look At Home For Things That Start With U

This will be a challenge for you and your toddler, as there will not be many things that start with the letter U at home. It is likely that you will have an umbrella and you will have utensils in the kitchen. There might be a uniform in your home, and a couple of long shots are a ukulele and a unicycle. Whatever you find, show your child the objects and then spell out the letters for them.

A little easier will be coming up with words starting with U, that your child has heard spoken around the home by members of the family. They may also have heard some words on the TV. There is up, under, underwater, university, uncle, us, use, useful, unique, umpire, unicorn, understand, united, upward, ultra and usher. With all of these words, use pictures or real life examples to explain the words and spell them out with toy letters.

Do you think that there are many words with U in them that don’t start with U? Yes there are a lot, and it is always a good idea to start with the easy ones. So there is bus, cup, mug, glue, bug, rug, tune, June, July, August, fun, sun, jump, jumper, lump, sum, run, Summer, bull, full, suck and supper. If you need to explain the meanings of any words use images or real life examples. Spell out each word so that your child can see where the letter U appears.

You can also play this “U words” game when you are outdoors with your child. Look for words that begin with U or words with U in them when you visit stores or restaurants. When you are in your car, or on the bus, you can look for street signs that contain the letter U. Record what you see, and then remind your child about these words by spelling them out when you return home.

Tell Them About Big U And Little U

It is a good idea to introduce the concept of capital letters fairly early on. Use pictures of the letter U in both the big letter U (capital letter U) and small letter U (lower case U) formats. Tell your child that capital letters are important. You can teach them that whenever somebody’s name is used it starts with a capital letter.

You can find a picture of the letter U in both formats online, or you can use word processing software to type both of these formats. You will want to print this out for your child, so use large fonts. Let your child trace these two formats of letter U, as this will help them later with their writing development.

Your Child Needs To Learn About Phonics

Your child will be a much better reader if they are taught with phonics instruction. Letter U phonics need to be learned together with all of the other letters. Each individual letter, and some combinations of letters, produces unique sounds or phonemes. When your child has learned all of these phonemes, they will find that reading will be a lot easier. More information on letter U sounds can be found below.

English Alphabet LETTER U SOUNDS:

U  /u/:

The 21st letter in the alphabet is U and it is the fifth and final vowel in the English alphabet. The letter sound for U is normally a short or small sound and is pronounced as /uh/ as in “up”, however, it can also be pronounced as /u/ as in “put”.

Examples:

CUP: /c /u/ /p/     /uh/ as in “cup”

RUST: /r/ /u/ /s/ /t/

RUM: /r/ /u/ /m/

PUT: /p/ /u/ /t/     /u/ as in “put”

Exercises for /u/

1. Before you begin, print a piece of paper for the Letter U /u/
2. Also print a piece of paper with the following words for U:
   UP
   CUP
   BUT
   SUM

MUST
CRUST

1. Show your child the Letter on the index card or paper and repeat the letter sound several times: U sound is /uh/ and remember it also sounds like “put”
2. Take time with your child to be sure the /u/ sound is pronounced correctly
3. Listen carefully as your child repeats the sound after you
4. Ask your child if different words have the /u/ 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 SUPPER, CUT, MUT, RUT
6. In this lesson you can continue with few games so your child replaces a letter in one of the words to make a different word:
   1. Ask your child what sound would CUP be if you replace the /p/ with a /t/? [CUT]
   2. What if you replace the /a/ with a /u/ in the word BAT? [BUT]
   3. How will MUST sound if you replace the /mmmm/ with a /g/? [GUST]
7. Finalize the lesson by asking your child what sound the U makes, remembering that the sound is normally /uh/ as in puppy, but also sounds like /u/ as in put.

Use A High Quality Reading Program And Teach Your Child To Read At Home

There are many advantages to teaching your child to read at home before they go to school. They are likely to achieve more academically, and you do not want to take the risk that your child will be taught to read properly at school. You do not need to be a teacher to do this. Just use a high quality reading program, so that you can deliver the short lessons to your child every day.

Look for reading programs that are proven to work. Jim Yang’s Children Learning Reading program has helped thousands of parents to teach their child how to read at home. It is not an expensive program, but it is very high quality and everything that you need is included. Jim taught his 3 kids how to read when they were just 2 years old. Find out more about Children Reading Learning here.

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