The construction of our language is based upon the 26 letters of the alphabet. For those who are learning English, knowing the 26 letters by name and their alphabetical order are skills that can be very supportive to all aspects of literacy.
Alphabetical order can initially be learnt as a sequence of 26 different kinaesthetic experiences in association with either:-
• Parts of the body (Using one of the examples shown in the list below).
• Body actions/movements (Using one of the possibilities presented in the box below.
• Signed actions from the sign language for the deaf e.g. apple, ball, cat, dark, etc
• Alphabet Finger signing as presented in the sign language for the deaf

Alphabet Games

Specialised collections of objects can provided a Kinaestheticresource for many alphabet based game s and activities. For example the author has a collection of small soft toysmany of which were bought for a few pennies at the local charity shops. The soft toy collection includes a Unicorn, a Bumble Bee,a Welsh Dragon,Poo Bear, a Terrapin, a lamb, a ram and a sheep, altogether the 30 plus soft toys cover almost every letter of the alphabet. Missing letters are presented by a teddy wearing something that provides the required initial letter such as A for Apron, and X Kissesfor X.

The author also has a set of storage draws (sold in DIY stores). Each little draw is labelled in alphabetical order.Another set of similar DIY draws is labelled with an additional option to identify consonant blends and digraphs. E.g. the top row of little sorting trays are labelled a, b, bl, br, c, cl, cr, d. At the end there is a section of trays marked ch ,ph, sh, th, thr, and the miniature objects provided are dollhouse chair, photo,shell, thimble, and an old three pence piece.

The author has a special collection of very small items that can be sorted into the alphabet trays. Two further sets of items for sorting into alphabetical order are: one set of everyday things, objects and toys; and another set of small precious, delicate,unusual and rare objects, which includes:A 4cm high beautiful blue bottle originally designed as an ornamental Victorian bottle of perfume and similarly a fine silver bracelet with an enamel butterfly decoration; a cluster of amethyst crystals; a painted china thimble and a bone-china Wade miniature of Walt Disney’s Lady from the film Lady and the tramp;a smooth stone with a snail picture painted on its flat surface; a miniature hand crafted painter’s pallet knife; a hazel nut; delicate imitation red rose (produced as a cake decoration)..The miniature objects presented in the different sets of alphabet objects offer a very pleasing range of multisensory experience, they also stimulate thoughts and ideas related to how, why and for what purpose the items were originally made.

The above alphabet collections can be used to play a variety of different alphabet games.
The Kym’s memory game has a new dimension if the items represent an alphabetical series of initial letter sounds.

This cow offers an opportunity to create an experience of alphabetical order. At this point the letters studied previously can be added to the cow to illustrate alphabetical order. Now the ABC of alphabetical order can be witnessed as real objects placed in alphabetical order on the cows back. This bronze cow can be used to illustrate the continuation of alphabetical order in groups of three.

A cow.
Abronze cow
Abronze cow carrying an acorn.
Abronze cow carrying an acorn and abutton.
Abronze cow carrying an acorn and abrown button.
Abronze cow carrying an acorn and abrown button and acork.

The use of real objects and initial letter sounds helps the learner to actively learn alphabetical order by constructing the correct sequence of objects on the cow. Learning in groups of three is an easy way to approach our 26 letter alphabet. If the objects are kept together in a box/basket then they can be taken out and placed upon the cow as a revision of alphabetical order. Further examples of this process in action are shown in the pictures below. All the objects need to meet the simplest initial letter phonics so that the initial letter clues are easy to identify. Thus an object would normally begin with a long or short vowel or a consonant or consonant blend as shown in the pictures below. Once an object has been placed on the first position then the following two objects will need to follow in alphabetical order. An alphabet line can be used to check that the objects are meeting the correct alphabetical order. Cork – dice – elephant.Ducklings – elephant – feather etc.

For this interactive alphabet activity the number of objects in the basket can be adjusted from as few as three consecutive items to a whole alphabet. If the basket contains items to represent both short and long vowels as well as any number of one, two or three letter consonant blends then the task of presenting the objects in correct alphabetical order equates to the order of words presented in a dictionary.
For those that are wise and capable spellers the objects in the basket can include those with more difficult initial letter spellings; such as g for giraffe where the gi spelling present the sound J. Generally it is best to avoid this by not using a giraffe or an owl or any other object that may make the correct presentation of alphabetical order too difficult and thereby open to confusion and error.

This game is played as follows:-
Single letter alphabet cards are placed in alphabetical order in a long row on the floor or along the table.
The players then take turns to choose an object to place against a card. The objects have to be placed in alphabetical order so the first player has to find something starting with A and the next player can only place something starting with the initial letter B etc. When a player places an item s/he says what it is and takes one counter (or unit block or glass pebble) for each word that starts with the correct initial letter sound. So for F the player could place a fat frog or for H a happy house and then two counters can be collected. If a player places a dancing dotty dog for D or a pink poodle puppet for P the player collects three counters.
The game can also be fun without any scoring system, played just for the fun of trying to create alliterative descriptive phrases and the creation of an alphabet of interesting items..

Building An Object Alphabet
The author also has an alphabet collection of animal ornaments and another set of beautiful laminated animal pictures.Alphabet games can be played with any collection of laminated pictures which may or may not be related to a specific theme.

Traditional card games adapted into an ABC alphabet formula.
Playing card games are based on a numerical order of value from one to thirteen – Ace to King. Many traditional games can be played using alphabetical sequencing instead of numerical order and either the first thirteen letters of the alphabet A – M or the last thirteen letters N – Z.

The game of Happy Families can be played using a set of letter cards that contain five different ways of writing each letter e.g. CAPITAL, lowercase, coloured, or specific font styles

[The author made a set of alphabet happy family cards using stick on calligraphy letters stuck onto plain playing cards.]
Go Fish can also be played using an appropriate set of alphabet letter cards and the Go Fish option.

This game can be started with either a single A card as shown above or a card displaying A andB this card is then the first of a set that continues in three lettergroups :-
C D E; F G H; I J K; L M N;O P Q; R S T; U V W; X Y Z.
Similarly if the first card is A B C then the rest of this card set will be D E F; G H I; J K L;
M N O;P Q R; S T U; V W X; Y Z.

Placing the letters on the cards in a diagonal pattern can help the players to memorise the sequence throuhg the associated visual recall of both the letter shape along with its position on the card.  

Learning letter recognition and alphabetical order can also be explored with a game that is played with the same structure as the traditional card game of Sevens. The alphabet version has up to four sets of 26 cards each with a different style and colour alphabet letter. E.g.

One or more sets are used for each game; shuffled and dealt between the players and an extra invisible player who’s card are placed as a bank or emergency pot. The bank cards are placed together face upwards on the table at the beginning of the game. Each player,at their turn, placesone or more of their cards so as to construct the alphabet in the correct alphabetical order.The game can be played:-
• either placing cards in alphabetical order from A through to Z consecutively
• or from the middle M which allows the players to build the alphabet backwards from M to A and forwards from M to Z
• or from Z. All the way back to A
Any player who cannot place a card from their own hand can exchange or collect a card form the bank. Choosing a letter from the bank encourages players to consider how to plan ahead and wisely collect the letters that are going to be needed sooner rather than later. When constructing an alphabet in reverse order Z to A this can be very tricky. In order to help players of all ages and ability to participate successfully they may choose to use an alphabet card that illustrates the correct A to Z sequence. The author likes these reference cards to have all the letters in one continuous unbroken line. One card for each of the different fonts can be to hand as a way of self checking the games progress.

Alphabetical I spy
In this game the participants can either call out when they see an I spyfor the next letter of the alphabet or participants take it in turns to present I spy for a words that follow alphabetical order. The I spygame can be played as an individual and more personal activity whereby what is seen and chosen as the I spywords is written down (or drawn)to complete an initial letter alphabet. There are many creative ways to find something for the more difficult letters such as finding a Z shaped stick or making an X design with a pair of crossed sticks or forming a J with stones on the ground.

The traditional ‘I went shopping and I bought ……..’ game can be changed into a different senario; such as ‘I made a sandwich or a stew with ……’ Now the items presented in the sandwich or stew can be presented as an alliterative list or an alphabetical list. The alphabetical stew game may go something like this: I made a stew with alphapha seeds and black beans and colourful carrots and diced dill and eggplant and freash grated ginger.
Initial Letter Alphabetical phrases.
When learning alphabetical order it may be helped to recall correct order through memorisation of key three word phrases as shown in the following examples:-
ABig Cow or ABamboo Cane or ABull Calf or ABoy’s Coat
Do elephants/eagles fight/fly/frown? Don’t eat feathers!Don’t eat [fresh flowers/]fish. Don’t ever forget the ABC.
Georgous Honey Icecream ! Go home immediately! Goats hate ivy.
John Kissed/kicked Lucy!
Jane Kept Laughing.
Make Nine (Orange) Ovals
Peaceful Quiet Rest
Seven Tall Unicorns
Very Wobbly X’s
Yellow Zigzags
Also a series of drawn pictures, (one for each three letter phrase) can provide a helpful visual aid for memorising alphabetical order. This drawing activity provides an integrated association of visual (pictures) and auditory (words) within a conceptual context that may support interest and an accurate recall of alphabetical order.

Structured phrases and sentences that illustrate alphabetical order.
Composing a sequenced text in which the initial letter of each word presents letters in alphabetical order can notably challenge our use of imagination, language and vocabulary skills.
This advanced creative writing challengelinks words into phrases or sentences that present the initial letter of each word in alphabetical order. Correct alphabetical order can be simply initial single letter sounds, e.g. A Big Cow Danced Elegantly For Grandma; or blends can be included as shown in the following examples:-
Abig brown cow.
Abroken china coffee cup.
Abeautiful butterfly danced elegantly forward, gaily heading into Jane’s kitchen.
Jane’s kittens love milk.
Never open pill pots.
My Mum never opens parcels.
Peter politely questioned reckless Robert.
Sam tried to understand Victoria’s worries.
Wonderful x-rays.
Yellow zigzags zips.
Creating phrases and sentences as shown in the above examples that illustratate alphabetical order, is a notable challenge because it draws upon a broad spectrum of vocabulary and a comprehensive knowledge of english grammer.
Reciting a suitably structured phrase of sentence can give an amusing way of recalling and memorising alphabetical order.
ABig/Brown Cow Drank Eagerly FromGavin’s Hose.
In John’s Kitchen Lilly Made Nourishing Oat Pancakes
Quickly Run, Slowly Turn
Uncle Victor WaseXaminingYour Zebra
The author has a small patterned lead crystal sherry glass:-
A beautiful clear delicate elegant fragile glass;
and also a small ornament of an elephant made from clear blown glass. This beautiful ornament supported the creation of the following alphabetical sentence:-
ABeautiful Clear Delicate Elephant ……
A beautiful cut diamond
Every frog goes hopping
Elegant/elusive fairies gather happily in joyful kingdoms/ kinship

Delicate Elegant Fragile GlassHorse
Fast Galloping Horses
Fast Galloping Horses Invoked Jumping, Kicking, Lunging Madly Neighing/Navigating Over Puddles.
A Big Cow
Uncle Victor Whistled
eXamining Your Zip
Houses In Johnstown [ Johnstown is a local village]
Kim Likes Marshmellows/Marigolds.
Kittens Love Milk.
Naughty Oliver Pinches
Quiet Restful Sleep