Free Printable Alphabet Chart

This free printable alphabet chart shows all 26 letters in both cases, each with a picture whose name starts with that letter’s sound, and the sound written out in plain letters. The b row carries a ball and /b/. The m row carries a moon and /m/. No phonetic symbols, because the chart is for a parent who has not studied any.

It prints on a black-and-white printer without losing anything, because nothing on it uses color to carry meaning. The pack is 4 pages: the wall chart, two cut-out desk strips, a blank chart for your child to draw their own pictures on and the method on the last page.

The one instruction that decides whether a chart teaches reading: point at a letter and say its sound, not its name. Say /m/, not “em”. The name is what the alphabet song already gives them, and it is the half that does not help a child read a word.

Where can I get a free printable alphabet chart?

Here, as a free 4-page PDF. It is the same file the alphabet and letter sounds guide hands out, so your child sees the same 26 pictures on both.

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Free printable alphabet chart (PDF)

Four pages: the A to Z wall chart with a picture and a sound under every letter, two cut-out desk strips for the table your child writes at, a blank version for them to draw their own pictures on and the method on the last page. No account, no email, no watermark.

1. Alphabet Chart (PDF)26 letters · 4 pagesDownload

What is in the 4-page pack:

• Page 1, the wall chart. All 26 letters, uppercase and lowercase together, each with its picture and its sound.
• Page 2, two desk strips. The alphabet cut in half, a to m and n to z, landscape, sized to cut out and tape to the table where your child writes.
• Page 3, a blank chart. Every letter and its sound, with the picture boxes empty.
• Page 4, the method, printed on the sheet rather than left on this page, because the person using the chart is often not the person who downloaded it.

What pictures does the alphabet chart use?

One picture per letter, and the same picture every time. That consistency matters more than which picture it is: a child who meets a ball on the chart, a bat on a letter card and a bed on a matching game has three answers to “what does b start?” and no hook for /b/. Our letter cards carry the chart’s own pictures for exactly this reason.

The 26 are: apple, ball, cat, dog, egg, fish, goat, hat, igloo, jar, key, leaf, moon, nest, octopus, pig, queen, ring, sun, tent, umbrella, van, web, fox, yak, zebra. The beginning sounds worksheets draw from the same 26, so the bingo board shows the ball the chart does.

5 of them carry a note on the chart, because 5 letters lie about themselves:

Letter	What the chart says
c	c and k both say /k/
g	This is hard g. In giraffe, g says /j/
q	q almost never travels alone. qu says /kw/
x	x comes at the END of a word, and says /ks/
y	y says /y/ at the start of a word, and acts as a vowel at the end: baby, my

The other 21 carry no note: the chart gives each its commonest sound, and the vowels’ long sounds come later.

The chart makes two deliberate choices. x is a fox, not a xylophone, because almost no English word starts with /ks/ and a xylophone teaches a child a sound x does not make at the front of a word. And the 5 vowels use the same keywords as our short vowel sounds page, so a child who meets both does not get two answers for a.

Are uppercase and lowercase on the same chart?

The chart pairs the two cases on every row, with lowercase first.

The pairing is the point. A and a are one letter, and putting them side by side is how a child learns that rather than memorizing 52 separate shapes. Lowercase leads because a child sees far more lowercase letters than capitals in anything they read, which is the case literacy researcher Timothy Shanahan makes for teaching them first. Common Core asks a kindergartner to recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters and puts neither case first. The letter tracing worksheets follow the same order, lowercase first.

How do you use an alphabet chart at home?

1. 1

   Point and say the SOUND, not the name

   Point at a letter and say /m/, not em. The name is what the alphabet song already teaches, and it is the half that does not help a child read a word.

2. 2

   Use the picture when the sound will not come

   Every letter has a picture whose name starts with its sound. A child who is stuck on m can look at the moon, say moon, and hear the /m/ at the front. That is the chart doing its job.

3. 3

   Find the sound in a real word

   Say a word your child knows and ask which letter it starts with. Mom starts with the moon sound. This is the step that connects the chart to reading rather than to the wall.

4. 4

   Stop after 2 or 3 letters

   A chart is a thing you use for two minutes, several times a day, not a lesson. It is on the wall so it can be pointed at in passing.

The chart earns its place by being on the wall, not by being a lesson. Two minutes at the fridge, several times a day, beats a sit-down session once a week.

Wall chart or desk strip: which do you need?

You need both, because a wall chart and a desk strip do different jobs.

The wall chart is for pointing at across a room. It goes somewhere a child passes, at their eye level rather than yours, and its value is that using it costs nobody any effort.

The desk strip is for the table where writing happens. It is landscape and sized to cut out and tape down, so a child who stops mid-word because they cannot remember which way b faces can look down instead of getting up. The alphabet is split across two strips so each one fits along the edge of a table.

Can we make our own alphabet chart?

Page 3 of the pack is blank for exactly that, and it is worth more than the printed one.

The letters and their sounds are there; the picture boxes are empty. Your child draws their own picture for each letter. A picture a child chose and drew is a better hook than a picture we chose, because they already have the memory of choosing it, and the drawing itself takes long enough to make the sound stick.

Two rules to hold them to: the picture has to start with the letter’s sound, and once it is drawn it does not change. It replaces the printed chart’s picture rather than joining it, so take the printed chart down once theirs is finished. A chart where b was a ball on Monday and a bike on Thursday is not a reference, it is a second thing to remember.

When should a child know all the letters?

By the end of kindergarten, which is when Common Core expects a child to recognize and name every upper- and lowercase letter, and the spread before that is very wide.

What matters more than the count is which half they know. A child who can name all 26 letters but cannot tell you what any of them says has learned the alphabet song, not the alphabet. The National Reading Panel put phonemic awareness and phonics among the five components of reading instruction, and neither of them is letter names. If you only have time to teach one, teach the sounds.