Learning the Alphabet is a good guide for parents who are beginning to teach letter recognition to their child. Beginning with A, the book devotes two lessons to each letter of the alphabet. The first lesson introduces both the upper and lower case letter. On the opposite page are the teacher notes, which give step-by-step instructions on guiding the child through the lesson. The second lesson reinforces the letter, with a page that has four different objects on it that begin with that letter. For example, the letter H has a heart, hot dog, hook, and house with the word printed below each picture. Again the teacher notes are conveniently on the opposite page, and they focus on the sound the letter makes. This format continues throughout the book. After the alphabet lessons, there are 28 review pages. These range from letter matching, circling the same letters in a row, and tracing letters. All student pages in this book can conveniently be reproduced.

This book is recommended for Pre K-K. The images are fun and age appropriate, and they include animals, objects, and people. [Note: There is a unicorn and witch depicted for the letters U and W.] The book is black and white, so extra coloring is encouraged. Some of the ideas given to the teacher to use during the lesson time are tracing the letter, saying a letter rhyme, and saying the word and letter sound. For each letter there are also suggestions for auditory games, where the student listens to a word being said and decides what letter it begins with. My 5-year-old loved coloring the letters and saying the sounds that went with them. I found that after she had completed the book, she could recognize most letters. The activity sheets in the back were very helpful for review also. Learning the Alphabet is a good beginning to having great reading skills.

Product review by Charlotte Gochnauer, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2011