Learning the Alphabet is a foundation to write and read. While other normal kids may learn fast, it may take a while for autistic kids to process and to keep in their memory.
I don't quite remember when my son was starting to learn the alphabet. We were teaching him for awhile through books, alphabet's song, games, puzzles, etc before he finally got it and memorized it.
Here are my steps for him to be able to know alphabet from A to Z in order.
Learn while playing.
We take advantage of fun time, family time, while eating snacks, or while watching TV after dinner.
- Using magnetic alphabet, I kept asking him to get me some letters from refrigerator's door.
Example, I want A or B etc. Give me D or C, etc. - We kept asking him, touch A, touch B, etc, every time we were sitting on the alphabet rug.
Learn In class.
- First thing in my homeschool's class, every day before we start I always ask my son to match/build his name using stickers I made. At least he knows 3 letters already by doing one of his routines.
Now he knows how to write his name, so we stop doing it.
- I photo copy two pages of alphabet from tracing book, one I use as a board, the other pages I cut each every letters, laminated and use as stickers to match on to the board.
I keep everything as simple as possible, so my son will get use to every written word on screen or books.
His task is to match A to A, B to B, etc, it took him few weeks to memorize all of them.
- Finally the last step, I ask him to build letters in order from A to Z without any hint. But first I did 10 letters, another 10, until he got and memorizing the whole alphabet.
Adam now is learning to read by spelling each every letters on his reading app, besides to practice his skill and I use it as a tool to build knowledge in vocabularies.
Although he reads only uppercase, I am beyond proud of his improvements day by day.
Below is his Dtube video while he learns to recognize the words and letters.
Note:
When your kid makes mistake while doing tasks, please fix it right away because mostly kids with autism are too consistent and will stick to whatever they learn. So don't let your kid learn the wrong one.