I’m going to start off by saying that I absolutely love “abcd Chants”. It may be one of my favorite books in the Picture Books by Chants series. If it is not my favorite, it is definitely the book that I use the most.

I can still remember the day that I first got a copy of it. We had just moved back to Japan after living in the States for 2 years. I was setting up my room for my English classes. My daughter Hana, who was 3 1/2 at the time, saw “abcd Chants” and asked me to read it to her. I told her I didn’t have time right then, but would read it for her later. Obviously, she didn’t like this answer. So I put the audio CD in my computer for her and told her to follow along with the CD. I continued setting up my room. The next time I looked over at her, she was already on ‘W’ and completely absorbed in the book. This experience is partially responsible for leading me to use the picture books audio in my classes more.

Anyway, fast forward a few months and I introduced the book to one of my classes. It was successful until about ‘F’ or ‘G’, when the kids became restless and lost interest. What I realized then is that it was just too long to use straight through from A to Z for most Japanese kids. It is hard to focus on new English for that long at one time.

Since then, I have very heavily integrated “abcd Chants” into my phonics program. (I’ll write more about my current phonics program later.) I love that the book introduces more words (five words) for each letter and my students love the drawings and short chants for each letter.

They especially love “A dinosaur dancing in a dark night”.
You can hear the audio for it here.

And since a few of them play rugby, “A rugger-bugger rabbit running in the rain” is also highly requested.

We usually focus on between 4-5 letters at a time. I play the audio and look at the  pages for whichever letters we are focusing on. Originally, I was using the book, but kept thinking that what I really wanted were cards that had the letter on one side and the chant on the other. Finally, I bought 2 more copies of “abcd Chants”. I carefully cut the binding off using a cutter and a ruler. Then, because the letter and picture pages are on a spread – not reverse pages, I used a bit of nori tape to tape the pages together. (Only put a bit on the end you will feed through the laminator first, otherwise you’ll end up with wrinkles.) Then I slid the pages into laminating film and laminated them. Now, instead of flipping through the book to the page I want to use that day, I can hold up the card for that letter. It also allows me a bit more control because, using the book,  sometimes kids get distracted by the picture page and don’t focus on the words page.

There are also games that I can play with the cards…

Put the cards out letter side up and say the chant. The students have to find the right card.

I also do a kind of rock-scissors-paper game (I’m sure there’s a Japanese word for it…). I put out the letter cards in a line. Two students start at opposite ends of the line. The students have to say the sound and word for the letter, then go to the next card and do the same. When they meet in the middle, they have to do rock-scissors-paper. The loser (or the next person on the loser’s team) starts over and the winner continues. The game ends when one team gets to the other end of the line. I usually play twice, having the teams switch ends so they get practice with all the letters. I have used cards with just letters for this game in the past, but using my “abcd Chants” cards would be better for students who are having a hard time remembering what sound the letter makes.

I’ve thought about buying another book or two to cut up and make a classroom alphabet border with, but I don’t have much wall space in my current classroom. An idea for the future…

You can hear audio for some of the other letters on the Audio Samples page.