Experimenting with Preschool (the alphabet)

The only letter that I can say with certainty that Benny knows is the B. With Aa, b, Cc, or Dd, I get an I don't know when I ask what letter is this and only about a 50% accuracy rate if I try the show me the letter whatever route. Now, I don't know for Benny can either mean he really doesn't know or it can just mean he's not sure enough that he's right to be willing to give me an answer. So for this week, I decided to change things up a bit and try a new approach.

Knowing that Benny loves to be outside, we moved our alphabet review outside for the week. On Monday, I drew each letter A to d on a separate square of our sidewalk. While I was drawing, I asked Benny to walked on the letter lines. Once all of the letters were drawn, we went back to the beginning and hopped our way through the letters, stopping to name each letter on the way. Then we turned sideways and stepped our way back to the beginning again naming all of the letters.

Next came letter tag. I called a letter. Benny went to tag it. If he tagged the wrong letter, I simply told him what letter he had tagged, repeated what he was looking for with the addition clue of its color. Then came Benny's favorite part. He got to call the letter, and I tagged it. Sometimes he would simply point to a letter and say that one if he didn't know the name. I usually just answered, "Do you mean the ______?" Then we ended by walking down the letters again and looking at each one. I told him the name of the letter and tried to describe each letter's shape to him. For instance, the small a was a circle with a tail, and the B was a straight line with two big bumps. Will this help him learn these letters? I'll have to get back to you on that one. What I do know is that he is having fun.

A few ideas we haven't tried yet. Tomorrow we can sweep off each letter and say its name. (DH mowed this morning.) I thought we could play freeze with Benny running up and down the sidewalk until I call freeze and then telling me what letter he's on. We might try letting Benny trace the letters in chalk. Other than that, we're going to try adding an alphabet book to our stack each day. Any other ideas??