Letter O
Teaching The Letter O
To make the O sound, your child needs to start with their mouth open and their tongue needs to be kept away from the top of their mouth. The letter O sound is made by bringing in their lips in a circular manner, with their tongue moving upwards and towards the front of their mouth.
There are many O words and your child may well be familiar with some of these:
On
One
Oar
Out
Off
Over
Start off by reading to your young child every day. You can get letter O books that are dedicated to the letter, from stores and online at a reasonable price. It may be worth checking at your local library too, to see if you can borrow these books. Choose books that have nursery rhymes in them and fun drawings as this will help your child to learn.
What about your child’s name? Does it contain the letter O? If it does then you can have fun by spelling out their name with plastic letters, and showing them where the O is positioned. If they don’t have an O in their name, you can use other names with O, that belong to TV characters or family members that your child will know. With all of these names spell them out so your child can identify the letter O.
Here are some names that start with the letter O that your child might be aware of:
Owen
Ollie
Olive
Olga
Omar
Oscar
After a while you can introduce tougher names that begin with the letter O like:
Olivia
Oswald
Orlando
Octavia
Oakley
Ophelia
The More Fun You Make It, The More Your Child Will Learn
The most sure-fire way to get your child to learn is to have fun teaching the letter O. Kids really like fun activities, and linking fun with learning is very important. You will find a number of letter N activities that are great fun, and these are discussed later on. It is a good idea to start with letter L worksheets. There are many of these online, so choose ones that have a lot of funny illustrations.
There is a lot of fun to be had by learning and singing the letter O songs. These are available online, and there are some really good ones out there. Also there are letter O videos that will be fun to watch with your child. There is a great example of a letter O video that is actually a letter O song below.
It is all about doing these things together. You need to be prepared to spend the time learning and singing letter O songs with your toddler. They will never forget this experience, and they will probably think that it is so much fun, that they will ask you to sing with them again and again. No matter how annoying this may be for you, sing with your child.
Some Further Letter O Activities For Preschool Kids For You To Consider
It doesn’t stop with singing songs, watching videos and using worksheets. You can also:
Discover Things That Start With The Letter O At Home
What things do you have at home that start with letter O? Can’t think of any? OK what about oatmeal, oil, olive oil, omelettes, onions, oranges, orange juice, oven and overalls? There are probably a few more. Show your child all of these things, and spell out the letters of the words for them so they can see they all begin with O.
There will be some other commonly spoken O words that your child will know. These could have been spoken by members of the family, or they may have heard them on TV. Your child will know on, off, one, only, out and over. They might not know oak, oar, office, opera, opposite and ornament. Use pictures to demonstrate the meaning of these words and spell them all out.
Then you can look for words with letter O in them, but not words that start with O. There are many words that contain the letter O and some of the easiest ones are pot, top, not, toy, log, dog, knot, word, long and joy. Spell out all of these words and explain their meanings if they are unfamiliar to your toddler.
You can continue this “words with the letter O” game when you venture outside with your child. When you are in the car or travelling by bus or train look for signs that contain the letter O. You can look for words starting with O and words with letter O in them when you are in stores, restaurants, play areas and so on.
Animals Letter O Game
All children think animals are fun don’t they? So the next activity concerns finding animals beginning with the letter O. You might think this is difficult but it isn’t. There is owl, octopus, orca, ostrich, otter and ox. Your child will certainly know some of these. Show them images of these animals and spell out all of the letters in their names.
OK we will now change this to look for letter O animals that do not start with O. This means their names contain an O. Some really easy ones here, such as dog, crocodile, dolphin, frog and fox. And of course hippopotamus, kangaroo, koala, leopard, lion, monkey and parrot. Spell out the letters each time and show images of these animals.
What About The Capital Letter O And The Lowercase Letter O?
By using pictures of the letter O in both capital letter O (big letter O) format and lowercase letter O (small letter O) format, you can teach your child the significant difference between the two. Explain why a capital letter is needed, and use names of people as an example here.
You can find a good picture of the letter O in both formats online, and you can print this off so that your toddler can trace the different formats. Alternatively, you can just type these formats and print them (make sure they are large). Learning these formats is very important for your child’s writing development.
It’s All About Phonics
Understanding that the letter O has phonics, or individual sounds known as phonemes, is very important for your child. All of the letters of the alphabet, and some combinations of letters, have unique phonemes that must be learned by your child so that they can become a good reader. The letter O sounds are further discussed below.
English Alphabet LETTER O SOUNDS:
O /o/:
The 15th letter in the alphabet is O and the 4th vowel in the alphabet. The O letter like the other vowels, has a short and long sound. The short O sound is “ah” as in hot AND “awe” as in off, the long O sound is the same as its name or “oh”. The way to know how the O is pronounced is this: if the O is followed by an e, the e is silent and the O is long or sounds like “oh” boat, hope etc. Otherwise the O is short and sounds like “ah” or hot, mom, bond etc.
MOD: Short O sound as /ah/
ON: Short O sound as /awe/
MODE: Long O sound as /oh/
Examples:
COP: /c/ /o/ /p/
HOT: /h/ /o/ /t/
MOP: /m/ /o/ /p/
Exercises for /o/
- Before you begin, print a piece of paper for the Letter O/o/
- Also print a piece of paper with the following words for O:
ON
LOT
MOP
BOX
SOCKS
BLOCK
NO
- Show your child the Letter on the index card or paper and repeat the letter sound several times: O
At this point you will only teach your child the short O sounds until they become more advanced and can learn the difference in the long and short O sounds.
Note: Children sometimes get confused with twoshort O sounds of “ah” as in hot and “awe” as in off and on - Take time with your child to be sure the /o/ sound is pronounced correctly
- Listen carefully as your child repeats the sound after you
- Ask your child if different words have the /o/ 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 BOSS, NOW, HOT, NOW
- Finalize the lesson by asking your child to tell you the sound of the letters
Can You Teach Your Child To Read? Yes You Can!
A lot of people think that you have to be a qualified teacher to teach your child how to read but this is not true. You just need instruction on how to do this and all of the necessary materials. You can get all of this, and more, from a high quality reading program that has been proven to teach children how to read.
Before you go thinking that this will be expensive, there is no need to worry because it doesn’t have to be. Yes, there are some expensive reading programs, but they are not all worth the money. A well priced, proven reading program is Jim Yang’s Children Learning Reading. Many parents have used this program to teach their children how to read fast. Find out more about Children Learning Reading here.
The teaching of the letter P can be simple and straightforward so please click here to go to the next section to find out more.
