Alphabet Poems for Each Letter Preschool, Kindergarten & 1st Grade

Alphabet poems are a fun way to help young learners practice letters and sounds! These alphabet poems for each letter A–Z are perfect for building letter recognition, phonics skills, and fluency through shared reading in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Plus, they’re funny and kids love them!

How I Use Alphabet Poems for Shared Reading

These Alphabet Poems are fantastic for ABC Letter of the Day or when you start learning and reviewing letter names and sounds in Kindergarten. And, each letter includes some following directions practice, too! The clipart in the upper right hand corner can help students find the correct page. This is especially helpful if you introduce the letters out of alphabetical order.

Letter C alphabet poem for preschool and kindergarten phonics practice

1. Read the letter poem together

Start out by reading the poem together a few times. After reading the poem two or three times, I call on a few volunteers to share something they noticed, wondered, or liked in the poem. Lots of times, they will notice the rhyming words, so it’s a great time to talk about the onset and rime of the words they notice.

2. Find the focus letter in the poem

Then, I read the direction to circle every focus letter. If you are doing this whole group, this is a great time for the teacher to use a projector to work through it with the students until they get the hang of it after a few poems.

Letter C alphabet poem with focus letters circled for preschool and kindergarten phonics practice

3. Practice the letter sounds

For the next step, we discuss the words that begin with the focus letter/sound. Students can use highlighters or crayons to color the words that begin with the letter. It’s also a great time to help students differentiate between letters and words.

Letter C poem with focus words highlighed

4. Draw a picture

Last, we chat about the words that begin with the focus letter again so students can decide which one they are going to draw in the picture box. After they finish their illustration, they have time to read through the poem on their own or review old poems.

Letter C poem with focus letters circled, words highlighted, and picture added

Their Alphabet Poetry Journal becomes a part of their reading materials so they can reread the poems we’ve done together independently or with a partner.

Such a fun shared reading activity for young readers!