How I Finally Got My Toddler to Learn the Alphabet Using the “A is for Apple” Song.
Best Phonics Songs to Teach Toddlers the Alphabet
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How to Use Phonics Songs — Daily Routine
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I’ll be honest with you. For three months, I sat across from my three-year-old with flashcards, foam letters, and an alphabet puzzle that cost more than my lunch. Nothing clicked. She’d point at “B” and say “circle.” Every. Single. Time.
Then I stumbled onto phonics songs — specifically the “A is for Apple” format — and something shifted almost overnight.
Here’s exactly what I used, how I used it, and what I learned along the way.
Why Phonics Songs Work When Flashcards Don’t
Before I get into the resources, I want to explain why this approach is different.
Flashcards teach recognition. Songs teach association. When a child hears “A is for apple, apple, apple” with a bouncy melody, her brain links the letter, the sound, and a concrete object all at once. It’s multisensory in a way a laminated card never will be.
My daughter started humming the tune in the bath after day two. She wasn’t studying. She was playing.
Resource 1: The Animated Phonics Song on Dailymotion
The first video I used was “A is for Apple | ABC Phonics Song for Kids | Learn Alphabet with Fun Animation“ — a bright, colourful animated video from the Kids Learning Videos channel on Dailymotion.
What it looks like: Each letter fills the screen in bold, primary colours. A cheerful narrator says the letter, then repeats the associated word three times — “A is for apple, apple, apple” — while the object animates on screen. The pacing is slow enough for a toddler but not so slow it bores a parent to tears.
How I used it: We watched it once together in the morning, just casually, while she ate breakfast. No pressure, no quizzing. I’d occasionally point at the screen and echo the word. That was it.
What worked: The repetition of the word three times is deliberate and brilliant. By the third “apple,” even a distracted toddler has heard it. After a week, my daughter was saying the words along with the video before they appeared.
Resource 2: Super Simple Songs — “A is for Apple”
The Super Simple Songs version (available at supersimple.com) takes a slightly different approach. Rather than animating each letter in isolation, it sings your way through the entire alphabet in one continuous song, pairing each letter with a vocabulary word.
What it looks like on the site: The Super Simple Songs page for this track is clean and uncluttered — a thumbnail, a play button, and free printables you can download below. The printables are genuinely useful: colouring pages that match the song’s vocabulary words, perfect for reinforcing the lesson after screen time ends.
The key difference from the animated video: Super Simple Songs has a warmer, more melodic sound. It feels less like a lesson and more like a lullaby. I used this one in the evenings, when she was winding down and couldn’t handle anything stimulating.
Pro tip: Download the free printables from the site before your session. After you play the song, hand your child the “A is for Apple” colouring page. The visual activity extends the learning without more screen time.
Resource 3: The Phonics Song for Toddlers on Dailymotion
The third resource — “Phonics Song – A is for Apple | Alphabet Learning for Toddlers | ABC Learning for Preschool Kids“ — is aimed at a slightly younger audience than the first video.
What makes it different: The visuals are simpler, the tempo is slower, and the words are repeated even more frequently. If your child is 18 months to two and a half years old, start here rather than the first video.
What it looks like: Large, clear letters appear on a soft pastel background. Real photographs of objects (an actual apple, an actual ball) rather than cartoons are shown alongside each letter. For very young children who aren’t yet connecting drawn images to real objects, this matters more than you’d think.
How I used it: I played this one on my phone while we were in the car. The audio alone was enough — she didn’t need to see the screen. By the time we arrived wherever we were going, she’d heard the first ten letters twice.
My Actual Daily Routine (The One That Worked)
After trial and error, here’s the 15-minute routine that finally moved the needle:
Morning (5–7 minutes) Play the animated Dailymotion phonics video during breakfast. Don’t quiz. Don’t pause. Just let it run while you both eat. Point occasionally. Say the words out loud.
Afternoon (2–3 minutes) Pull up the Super Simple Songs version on your phone. Play it in the background while she colours. Hand her the matching printable if you printed it in the morning.
Evening (optional, 3–5 minutes) The toddler-focused Dailymotion version in the car or during quiet time. Audio-only works fine.
What I stopped doing: Drilling her. The moment I made it feel like a test, she shut down. The moment I made it feel like background noise she could choose to engage with, she started engaging — on her own terms.
What Happened After Two Weeks
By day ten, she was pointing at letters on cereal boxes and saying the associated word — not always the letter name, but the word. “Apple!” she’d shout, jabbing a finger at the letter A on the packaging.
That’s actually better than just letter recognition. She was building phonemic awareness — the understanding that letters represent sounds and sounds represent words.
By week three, the letter names started coming. First A, E, and O (the vowels are easiest because the songs repeat them most). Then B, D, and M.
By week four, she could sing most of the alphabet song unprompted in the bath.
Practical Notes Before You Start
Screen position matters. For the animated videos, put the screen at eye level — not tilted up on the kitchen counter. When children have to look up, they disengage faster.
Sound quality counts. Tiny phone speakers flatten the melodies that make these songs sticky. Even a small Bluetooth speaker makes a significant difference in how much a toddler engages.
Don’t loop it endlessly. One or two plays per session is enough. More than that and the song becomes background noise they tune out entirely.
Use the printables. The Super Simple Songs free printables are genuinely good. Print five or six at the start of the week. Let her colour them anytime — not just when you’ve just played the song. The passive reinforcement adds up.
One Thing Nobody Told Me
The goal at this age isn’t mastery. It’s exposure. You’re not trying to produce a child who can recite all 26 letters on command. You’re building a foundation of familiarity so that when a teacher points to the letter B in a classroom, your child has already heard “B is for ball” a hundred times in a song they love.
That’s what these three resources do well. They’re not tests. They’re not programs. They’re just songs — catchy, well-made, well-paced songs that your child will absorb without even trying.
Start with the animated Dailymotion video tomorrow morning. Don’t say anything. Just play it. See what happens.
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