German - English Alphabet Cards 

Safety Instructions

1.     Adhere to 'The Goldilocks Principle' Not too little, not too much – quality time spent with your child, following his or her interest. Once the child has grasped something, or loses interest, don't labour it. If you overstrain a child with something that is not interesting or too abstract, the child will lose the pleasure of playing for a long time.

 2.     Drilling is killing – children learn through multifaceted sensory experiences that are rooted in the real world and their first hand knowledge of it. Literacy begins with language, listening and speaking to construct meaning. Parrots repeat without understanding or meaning.

 3.     O is for satsuma – there was once an adult who was very keen for a child to learn the alphabet at a young age. The adult was very proud that the child said all the flash cards right. 'A is for apple, b is for boat...' chanted the child to the adult's delight. But then something unexpected happened. 'O is for satsuma' the child went on. The adultt did not understand that the child had no way of connecting the letter to the words yet, and was simply saying what was in the picture. The child thought this is what the adult wanted her to do, and her favourite fruit was a satsuma, so she was very excited about seeing one. 'No, that's not a satsuma, it's an orange.' said the adult. The child was very confused. She loved satsumas. But somehow that was wrong. She felt a sense of failure. 

General Approach

Children learn through playful interaction, There is no wrong, if a child develops a sense of failure she will become discouraged and demotivated. Accept and extend all of her imaginative offers, whether fantasy rhymes, words, sounds songs or stories. These all give the child the need to encode and de-code language in written text. Accept all mark-making, pretend reading, pretend writing as important stages of this developing desire to encode and decode the spoken word. Pay attention to symbols and signs and help your child to notice and attach meaning to them. This way learning will continue to hold joy and excitement. The cards are there for conversation and play. The seeds of reading are planted through the grounding of language, and so use the cards as a catalyst for interaction to nourish growth and development. One day in their own time those seeds will flower beautifully.

Getting Started

At the beginning, everyone looks at the cards together and talks about what they can see. The abundance of 26 cards in the beginning may be too much for children, so it is recommended to pre-sort the cards.

 For small children, a good starting point is the letters in their own name. These are often the first letters that a child will learn. Children learn letters at different times and there is no order which has been proven to be better. Therefore, go with what the child already knows first, and work up from that. Of course, this mean that each child has their own, unique journey! Join them and support them in it. 

 "That's the H like Henry, that's your letter. Doesn´t this letter look interesting? Like two trees with a bridge. "

 Adults always speak the phonetic sound of the letter eg. That's the H as H H H Henry. (please do not use the ‘heitsh like Henry's’ version.) That's too abstract in the first step.

Use a Crib to aid de-coding:

Ask your child for a crib for each letter and repeat it every time you see that letter. That's the S, it looks like a snake and this snake makes ssssssss. (In the streets of Berlin you see often the SBahn sign: This is a S-Bahn sign. Can you see the S?)

That's the A, it looks like a roof. I say AAAAAAh, luckily I have a roof over my head when it rains.

Make it physical and / or sensory

Children attach meaning through real-life interaction with the world around them. See if they can trace the letter with their fingers or paint it on the palm or back of the child or draw it in the sand. Make it together with your hands or bodies. Some children also bite letters from sausage or pretzels. Or form letters from dough or clay. If letters are an interesting topic, it can also be fun to eat a letter soup together.

Early Reading

A child may remember the shape and form of a particular word through familiarity, then 'read' it. A child may also enjoy copying certain words. These are the first steps in photographic reading, very common in English and an important stage of learning to read. Even though the child may not be actually de-coding, this is an important precursor to later fluency. 

The child may be asked if they can already read the word, or if they can recognize the same word in the other color. 

 What words can you already read? For every word that the child can read, the adult may take a step forward. Thus, an extension of the knowledge for the child can be easily represented.   

Letter games:

The cards are placed on the back and only the blue side is seen.

First you can ask, can you find your letter? Where is H like Henry? Do you find my letter?

If I write a letter on your hand or a piece of paper, can you find it?

The next question is, do you know which picture is on the back or what the letter is called?

 Use the cards to make stories by starting with one card, and allowing your child to choose cards to add to the story. 'Once upon a time I was eating an apple on a boat when I realised that standing next to me was a gorilla...' Etc etc. Then let your child do the same.