More Alphabet Adventures: Teaching the Letter Xx

A couple of years ago, I found a toy xylophone quite similar to this one at a local thrift shop. My budding musician loves it--second only to anything that can be used as a drum and his "pipano" (toy piano). I have to remind myself when I am casually hiding some of these instruments for a while that I, too, was an aspiring musician at his age and, indeed, demonstrated this early interest similarly--which led to years of classical piano lessons and hundreds of compositions to boot. Children who demonstrate a passion provide a great tool for us adults who wish to teach them! Whenever I can incorporate those passions into our natural learning process, I feel confident that not only will my sons (or students) enjoy our activities, they will also retain the knowledge they acquire.
I hold off on teaching the letter Xx until we have covered many of our other alphabet letters. Xx is a confusing little letter! It does not begin a lot of words that children are familiar with, and the few that it does do not even have the same beginning sound. Many educators present a project related to X-rays. I knew, however, that my little musician would much prefer an activity about a xylophone!

When I was ready to introduce our letter of the week, I got out our trusty toy xylophone and we sang this playful little song:
The Xylophone Song (adapted from a song I once heard a music teacher play with a preschool group)
"Hi, my name is ______ and I can play the xylophone!
Hi, my name is ________ and I can play the xylphone!
I can play high [glide mallet up the xylophone]
I can play low [glide mallet back down the xylophone]
I can play fast! [play quickly]
I can play slow! [play slowly]
And now I pass the xylophone... [child passes to next player]"

This song is a great group activity. The leader/teacher can demonstrate first and pass the xylophone around the circle. Through singing and playing the song, children learn social skills of taking turns and also the musical skills of playing at different tempos, playing up and down the scale and how to be gentle with instruments. The song also builds confidence in budding musicians, who can successfully "play" this song at a wide breadth of developmental ages and stages.

Our letter craft incorporated both our target letter and the developmental skills of being able to sequence shapes from largest to smallest! I pre-cut strips on colored paper that happens to be different colors on each side. My toddler chose which side to glue and which to have face up. Just as I suspected, he has really retained memory of this letter, likely because of my inclusion of his current passion--playing music. He found letter "rex" (have to work on that one!) in the perpendicular lines of a parking lot, in his tinker toys and even in the sky at the park!

"Look, Mommy, letter 'rex!' Starts with 'xylophone!'"

When I teach letter Xx to older preschoolers, I also use it as an opportunity to develop early sequencing skills. We talk about how this letter is not found at the beginning of a whole lot of words but is found in the middle and at the end of many words. I provide sentence strips with the words "beginning," "middle," and "end," along with a set of words containing the letter Xx in each of these categories for sorting (such as xylophone, x-ray, xerox, ox, exercise, ax, fox, excellent, exit, fix, mix...).

I do feel proud as a parent (and teacher) when a lesson is retained! I also feel pleased when I see how this builds confidence and love of learning. However, my greatest feeling of success comes not in how many letters my son (or students) "know" and I do not have a specific agenda for these skills to be developed; every early reader develops at a different rate. I feel most successful in teaching when I see a child enjoy learning and playing and we can appeal to this by incorporating themes they are passionate about.

Happy Playing!