Alphabet Songs

Smiley loves Sandra Boynton's ABC Book. One reason is that we seldom read Boynton's text and instead use it to sing the alphabet song. Singing makes any book extra popular and he knows the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle" for other reasons.

Reading the book so often would make the simple alphabet song get boring. So I alter the final couplet to:

Now I know my ABC's,
Next time won't you sing it backwards.

Then we go sing the alphabet backwards, which by now I have also memorized.

z, y, x, w, v, u, t,
s, r, q, p, o-n-m-l-k,
j, i, h,
g, f, e,
d, c, b, a,
Now I've sung my ABC's,
Next time won't you sing about the animals.

Then we go through the book a third time, forward, singing the animal names. Except that I'm nerdy enough to know about the frog whose name starts with X, so I use that name for the X animal.

We sing the alphabet song at other times as well, especially on walks and in the car. Years ago when I started teaching Hebrew to children I figured out how to fit the Aleph-Bet to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle".

א aleph בּ bet ב vet ג gimmel ד dalet ה hey
ו vav ז zayin ח chet ט tet י yod כּ kaf כ chaf
ל lamed מ mem נ nun ס samech
ע ayin פּ pay פ fay צ tzaday
ק qof ר resh שׁ shin שׂ sin ת tav
Next time won't you sing with me.

The letters aleph, yod, lamed, nun, qof, and resh are in bold because they receive two syllables worth of time.

Smiley has not heard it nearly as often, but back when teaching Hebrew I also figured out how to fit the Aleph-Bet to the tune of "Dai-aynoo" since it was nice to sing the Hebrew alphabet to a Jewish song.

א aleph בּ bet ב vet ג gimmel ד dalet (eeloo hotzee hotzee-aynoo)
ה hey ו vav ז zayin ח chet ט tet (hotzee-aynoo mee-Meetzray-eem)
י yod כּ kaf כ chaf, ל lamed מ mem (hotzee-aynoo, mee-Meetzray-eem)
נ nun ס samech (dai-ay-noo)
ע ayin פּ pay, פ fay צ tzaday (dai-dai-ay-noo, dai-dai-ay-noo)
ק qof ר resh, שׁ shin שׂ sin ת tav (dai-dai-ay-noo, dai-ay-noo dai-ay-noo)

This time the letters hey, vav, chaf, mem, ayin, fay, qof, resh, and sin receive two syllables worth of time, and the letter shin receives three syllables.

UPDATE: Over Thanksgiving vacation I noticed something interesting. I have a habit that I thought was common but apparently is not: when singing the normal alphabet song I drag out w so that it takes up an entire line. This means the final line is x, y, z without the word "and" since the word "and" is not a letter!

UPDATE: Also, the English alphabet fits "Dai-aynoo" very well. I should start singing that also, so Smiley does not develop the habit some toddlers have of considering lmno as a single letter.

a, b, c, d, e, f, g,
h, i, j, k, l, m, n,
o, p, q, r,
s, t, u, v,
w, x, y, z.

Then I can replace the chorus with "alpha-bet..." instead of "dai, dai, aynoo".

alphabet, alphabet,
alphabet, we sing our ABC's!