One problem children may have at primary school is remembering the ORDER of
the letters of the alphabet. I had this problem, until it was solved for me
when on holiday. A lady was teaching "the alphabet song" to a group of
children at the guesthouse. The NAMES of the letters are used. It went
like this -

Ae, Be, Ce, De,
Ee, eF, Ge,
AecH, Ie, Jae, Kae, eL, eM.
eN, Oe, Pe, Que,
aR, eS, Te, Ue,
Ve, UUe*, eX, wYe, Zed.

("double-Ue" is really U U or V V in origin; the Romans used V, not U;
whence our W. The spelling here is purely an arbitrarily created spelling to
denote the name of W. It is pronounced "double-Ue"; note the two capitals.)

Of course, these "words" were SOUNDED, not spelt, and I never knew how to
SPELL the names of the letters till years later. The spelling shown here is
my own concoction, deliberately so, as it is inter-related. In singing this
"song", a pause at the end of each line is important. There may be other
versions, but this is how I remember it. It helped me enormously; once the
order is learned then the poem itself can be forgotten or discarded.

Much as I admire Rudolf Flesch ("Why Johnny Can't Read") as a hardheaded,
no-nonsense, practical educator, I beg to differ on one point - it is quite
possible to teach a four-year old child (the sound of) the NAMES of the
alphabetic letters without confusion, ie. not leave it for later. Indeed,
it isn't really possible to spell aloud without reciting such names.
Otherwise, we are left with only the SOUND of the letters, thus -

Ahh, Buh, C(kuh)*, Duh, Ehh, Fuh, Guh, Huh, Ihh, Juh, Kuh, Luh, Muh, Nuh,
Ohh, Puh, Q(kuh)*, Ruh, Suh, Tuh, Uhh, Vuh, Wuh, X(kus)*, Yuh, Zuh.
(*C,Q,X don't have unique sounds)

These "words" are chosen for lack of emphasis on anything much than the
alphabetic-letter itself. Vowels have a double consonant, hopefully to
convey the "short" sound of the vowel.
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