Over the course of my internship, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of students with goals that involve the alphabet; ranging from writing the entire alphabet, both in lower and upper case letters, to letter identification. In order to serve multiple students with their alphabet related goals, I wrote this song. I’ve had a lot of fun using this song in sessions, so I’m sharing it here with you today.

I wrote two versions of this song, one in English, the other in Spanish. The lyrics are largely the same. The lyrics and the recordings for both are listed below.

Oh in the alphabet kitchen,

There’s so many foods to eat!

Oh, in the alphabet kitchen, 

I found a tasty treat!

Oh in the alphabet kitchen,

There’s so many foods to eat!

Oh, in the alphabet kitchen,

I found a big red apple!

Oh apple starts with “A”!

Let’s draw letter “A”!

Oh en la cocina del alfabeto,

Hay muchos alimentos para comer!

Oh en la cocina del alfabeto,

¡Ay, que deliciosa!

Oh en la cocina del alfabeto,

Hay muchos alimentos para comer,

Oh en la cocina del alfabeto,

¡Encontré arroz!

Arroz empieza con un “A”

Dibuja un “A”

The final lines can be adjusted as needed to work on different goals. For example, you can adjust the last line to instead ask someone to find the letter, rather than draw it. The first verse can also be left out to save time. Additionally, you can encourage dancing/singing/playing instruments during the first half of the song, which works well both to help with highly energetic students, and as a reset after each letter, which can be difficult, especially if the students are writing both upper and lower case letters.

What I’ve liked the most about using this song is that in a few different sessions, it has led to some fun discussions about favorite foods! For example, I use “spaghetti” when I get to the letter S in English. When introducing this food for this letter with a student, his eyes lit up and told me, very excitedly, that spaghetti is his favorite food! He was then much more enthusiastic to identify, then write the letter “s”, as now it held more significance; his favorite food! 

Speaking of the different foods listed alphabetically, I’ve included an English and Spanish list of alphabetical foods below; I found this was the hardest part of preparing this song (turns out, not too many foods start with the letter “x” in English!). That being said, some of those more unfamiliar food names can serve as a teaching moment, both for the student and whoever is working with them (for example, I had never heard of a xigua before writing this song, and neither had the students).

I’ve really enjoyed using this song, and I hope that it might be useful to you as well!

Thank you for reading!