Letter E

Teaching The Letter E

The letter E has three sounds and these are “ee”, “eh” and “er”. To make the “ee” sound you need to teach your child to use the front part of their mouth, the “eh” sound uses the middle portion and the “er” sound uses the rear of the mouth.

Some “ee” examples are:

Feet

Meet

Keep

Some “eh examples are:

Get

Let

Bread

Some “er” examples are:

Earn

Learn

Herd

To make things easier, the letter E sound is grouped into the short sound “eh” and the long sound “ee”. This is fully discussed below.

If you want to succeed with teaching the letter E to your children, then you will have to be consistent with this teaching and be very patient. When your child is very young you need to read to them a lot. There are many letter E books around, and these can either be borrowed from libraries or purchased in stores or online. Go for books that have funny illustrations, and if there are nursery rhyme books then these are even better.

Does your child’s name contain the letter E? If it does, you can have a lot of fun spelling their name out with cut-out or plastic letters and showing them where E appears. You can use family names or characters names from TV if your child’s name does not contain an E.

There are a few names that start with the letter E, and here are some of the easier ones that you can discuss with your child:

Eve

Eva

Emily

Emma

Eddy

Evan

After your child can recognize these names you can show them more complex names starting with letter E:

Elizabeth

Eleanor

Edward

Elliot

Emelia

Eamon

Be Prepared To Have Fun Teaching The Letter E

When your child is young they just want to have fun. If you have fun teaching E with them then they will be much more eager to learn. There are a number of things that you can use to help the learning process, and one of these is using letter E worksheets. Use letter E worksheets for preschool that have interesting pictures on them to help with the learning process.

Letter E songs are a great idea. If the song is fun, your child will want to sing this with you all of the time. Learning and singing the song together is very important. You can also find a letter E video that will be fun for your toddler. A lot of the songs are in video format and there is a good example of this below.

If your child really enjoys doing something, then there is a strong likelihood that they will want to do this over and over again. This can certainly happen with the singing of a letter E song and watching videos about the letter E. You need to take this into consideration and always be willing to sing the song with them.

What About Other Letter E Activities For Preschoolers That Are Fun?

Things That Start With The Letter E In Your Home

Are there objects that start with the letter E in your home? It is not the easiest of letters, but if you think about it you can find some. Your child will probably know egg, earphones, earrings and elastic bands.

What about other E words that your child will hear you speak and other family members? Maybe there are words that will picked up from the TV? Examples of this can be exercise, eating, eager, elderly, even, Easter and energy. When you are discussing these words with your child, use pictures or an example and spell the words out to them so that they can see the letter E at the beginning.

Then there are many words with letter E in them. It is always a good idea to start with easy and familiar words and provide examples in real life or use pictures. You can use head, time, hear, wear, tear, game, tea, water, knee and so on. Make sure that you spell out each word and point out where E occurs.

You can take this a step further by using the head, shoulders, knees and toes song that kids love. All of these body parts contain the letter E. Make this really fun by having a sheet with the words on it so your child can see where the letter E is in the different words.

Animals That Begin With The Letter E

Does your child like animals? Great, then you can show them pictures of animals that start with E. As usual, start with the easiest and most familiar ones first. There is elephant, earwig and eagle which your child should know. They may also know an emu and an eel. In truth there are not that many animals that start with E and these are not so well known but you can tell your toddler about an elk, eland, echidna and an earthworm.

There are many animals with E in their name. Get some pictures of tigers, leopards, sea lions, coyotes, monkeys, rhinoceros, sheep, and squirrels etc. If your child does not know some of these, they will have fun learning about these letter E animals. With the pictures that you show to your toddler, it is important that you also show the animal name spelled out, so they can see the letter E.

 Show Your Child Pictures Of The Letter E

It is vital that your child understands the difference between big letter E (capital letter E) and small letter E (lowercase letter E), and showing them pictures of letter E in both formats will help them with this.

It is not difficult to find images of the letter E. There are several places online where you can download and print these. Also there are stores where you can buy these images. Make sure that you have pics of the letter E that your child can use at any time.

It’s All About Phonics Of The Letter E

Learning to read through phonics instruction has been proven to be the best method of teaching a child to read. It is really important that your toddler can identify the different phonemes (sounds) that the letter E makes. In time they will know all of the letter phonemes and they will go on to be great readers.

English Alphabet LETTER E SOUNDS:

E  /e/:

The 5th letter in the alphabet is E which is the second vowel and it is a voiced sound that is made in the throat. The short sound is pronounced “eh” as in fed and the long sound is the same as it’s letter name and pronounced “ee’ as in keep.

For a young child to be able to tell the difference between the short sound and the long sound is monumental. We find that teaching the “short” sound first is best because it’s part of the basic code and the foundation for the long sounds later on.

Examples:

EGG: /e/ /g/

BEG: /b/ /e/ /g/

END: /e/ /n/ /d/

Exercises for /e/

1. Print a piece of paper for the Letter E/e before you begin the lesson
2. Also print a piece of paper with the following words for E:
   RED
   LED
   END
   MELT

NEST

1. Show your child the letter on the index card or paper and repeat the letter sound several times: E in the short sound of “eh” only
   Note: Be sure to pronounce only the short E or “eh” sound until your child has a firm grasp on the basic code
2. Listen carefully as your child repeats the sound after you
3. Ask your child if different words have the /e/ sound and wait to see the response. Always repeat the word using the letter sound to be sure your child knows the sound
4. Continue to repeat other short sound /e/ words such as EGG, FED, BED, REST
5. Finalize the lesson by asking your child to tell you the sound of the letters4

Get Help Teaching Your Child To Read 

Mastering the letters of the alphabet is a big step forward to being able to read. There are some very high quality reading programs available, that will provide you with all the information that you need to teach your child to read effectively. Make sure that you choose a reading program that practices synthetic phonics and develops your child’s phonemic awareness.

One of the most proven reading programs out there is Jim Yang’s Children Learning Reading program. With this inexpensive program, you will be taught how to deliver short reading lessons to your child that only take 15 minutes a day. These can be broken down into 5 minute sessions to make it even easier. Many parents have testified to the ease and effectiveness of the Children Learning Reading program. You can find out more here.

If you want to see the great ways to teach the letter F then please click through to the next section.