Animated Alphabet is a program that we created at École Sacré Coeur, which connects letters and their sounds to actions and stories to help students make long-lasting connections. Our Animated Alphabet is bilingual, so it can be used in both French and English (with the exception of the vowels).
Let's get started...
Most consonants make the same sound in French and English. Vowels are more difficult, and are discussed at length, because they have different sounds in both languages and even make different sounds within English alone (ie. short and long vowel sounds)!
The following document contains the key word and action that helps the students remember the sound for each letter. These are the English actions, but please keep in mind that most consonant sounds are the same in English and French.
If you find that your child requires a picture cue to remember the sounds the letters when reading or writing, the following document may be of use. These are the pictures that we have posted in class for each letter. These images come a program entitled AlphaGraphe.
Going a little further!
Both languages have combo sounds. These are sounds that are produced by more than one letter (ie. th in English, oi in French). These combos have their own stories and actions as well! Once your child has mastered single letter sounds, these combined sounds will become an important part of sounding out words with accuracy.
Here's a game!
To improve your child's retention of these letter sound connections, while having fun, silently do the action for one of the letters and have your child guess which letter you're miming, then switch roles! Once your child has mastered that skill, you can put the letter actions together to spell out a simple word! (ie. cat, dog, bat, dad, etc.)