how to help her recognise numbers & letters

[Floweryfields]

There is a great educational program called Letterland (google it). They are aimed at pre-school children and introduce all the letters of the alphabet. Each letter is a character. ie. Annie the apple, munching mike. They have videos, books, flash cards. Some really great resources that are fun and educational.

My brothers learnt all the letters and phonics using this program before starting school and I knw that their pre-school did it with them as well.

HTH!

Letterland is our centre of learning in our programs at my childcare centre. It was introduced a couple of years ago now and our kids (and families) absolutely love it! It is heaps of fun and the prep teacher here has told us that her preppies this year who came from us, have a very high literacy level.

[Roryrory]

The article I read suggested that pre readers need to be exposed to a wide variety of text, as in books, papers, lists, signs and labels. It is our job to point them out. Children at this stage should be more interested in the sounds of a word or phonics rather than being able to recite a letter. Helpful things to do is to sound words out or even get hold of some poems or rhyming type books. Another important thing to do is to let your child read to you and use their finger from left to right as if they were really reading.

Along the same lines, might I suggest you check out the book "Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn-- And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less" (i think this is about the millionth time I have recommended it to someone LOL!) The premise of the book is, in part, that learning the alphabet or numbers are only small elements of literacy and numeracy, and often a focus on leaning letters and numbers can be at the expnse of developing other skills, such as telling a story (ie: learning that there is a begin, middle and end of any narrative), reading maps (literacy and spatial ability combined!), and so on.

I am not saying "don't encourage" her but rather suggesting that you do it in a context that fuels her obvious love of learning

[mrsmac]

Here here Roryrory!!!

As a kindergarten teacher I see children who have great sight word skills and may know every letter and number but have no comprehension and cannot tell me a rhyming word. Its very often at the expense of some very important stuff that children race ahead with reading and number.