My younger son, who is 3, has known all of his letters (and their sounds) for quite some time - probably since just past his 2nd birthday. He started writing the letters about 4 months ago or so (very crudely). He started asking DH and I to write the alphabet out on his Doodle Pro board over and overand over again! He gets out his little travel-size Doodle Pro and writes his letters one at a time. My older son, who is 4 1/2 and autistic, can pretty much recognize all the letters in the alphabet, but I don't know that he's made the connection about the sounds yet.
To tell you the truth, I taught elementary school for 11 years, and I really didn't push either of my kids to learn their letters at a toddler age. If my younger son didn't know his already, I'd be starting to introduce them now. It's a totally different situation, obviously, with my older son, but I am glad he at least can recognize them. I guess with the huge shift lately in education, it's becoming more and more of an advantage to get kids started on this stuff super early. I just think that at some point the pendulum will swing back the other way (as it always does). IMO, it's not really developmentally appropriate to push kids to be able to write correctly until about 1st grade. That's when formal handwriting instruction really starts. A friend of mine taught preK and she used to have her students trace their name (she'd write them out in dots) - I thought that was plenty of writing for that age.
I like the idea about labeling the different lines on the handwriting/ruled paper. That's a great way to teach letter formation!

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My dd is almost 5 and can write all her numbers 1-10 and ABC's. She can spell about 10 words, like her first/last name, mom, dad, car, hat, pop-pop, sister/brother/dog's names. I bought her the Jumpstart kindergarten workbook and she absolutely loves it. She can sound out words and tell me the first and last letters now. It's been a tremendous help. I am hoping to get the CD ROM for her for Xmas. I think they have jumpstart pre-k too, I wish I had gotten that as well. (I even ground her from doing workbook when she's misbehaving!)

Ds is almost 5 and has known all his letters since he was a little over 2. He did very little writing until this year of premprimary, however. He could write his name and all his numbers but that was about it. It wasn't until this year of montessori that he has been writing a lot - he'll take one of his books and copy it word for word. I call him my scrivner! (Like Bartleby!) Up to a few days ago he'd run all his words together and REALLY get p*ssed off if I had a hard time reading his words. I finally had to show him and tell him, "leave a space! Leave a space between words so I can read them!" and thankfully he's started. He is just starting to read - like recognize words, he is working on sounding them out but hasn't really 'gotten' it yet. I can't wait for that light to dawn. I'd love for him to read before Kindergarten since he loves books so much.

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Yes, but not really well until he went to PreK. it is awesome!! He can count to 100, too!

any suggestions?

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Wyatt is 4.5 and he can recognize his upper and lower case letters and he can write the upper case.

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Jodie....Wife to Andrew (1995)
Mommy to Riley (2000) and Wyatt (2003)

My daughter will be 4 in July. She knows all her letters, but we haven't started working on drawing them yet. I am still amazed at a picture she drew for me last week. Usually she just scribbles, and last week she drew a picture of a bunch of jelly fish for me.

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ds 3 1/2 can write his first and last name he can recognize the uppercase on paper and now can write 16 of the 26 letters. we are doing kumon books it taught him how to make the vert horz lines first then the letters that use those then on to curves and so on. it has been so easy to teach him compared to older ds once the capitols are mastered then we will move on the the lowercase.. he knows 1-10 on paper and can write the easy ones.. we will continue with our workbooks thru the summer so he should be ready for pre-k in the fall. plus we are doing a cutting and coloring and pasting books that he loves.

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I would like to reiterate what a pp said about teaching your child the correct handwriting for your school district. There are 2 very different styles: block and denelian. Denelian (I may be spelling it wrong) is more flowing and may help with cursive later on, while block really works on fine motor skills and hand control. As a first grade teacher, my school taught block writing and the kids who transferred in who had learned denelian had a hard time adjusting to our workbook (IMHO block should always be taught first, but there are varying opinions out there).
Early learning is a good thing, but it is important to leave some of it for preschool and kindergarten. It is true that Kinder is the new first grade, but a good preschool is preparing students to make that jump. Basically, don't push, they will do it when they are ready and the light comes on for them. Also, if they learn everything before preschool and kindergarten, they may be bored in class which can lead to behavior problems. It is important to focus on developmental milestones, socialization, sharing, fine and gross motor skills, and the basics with recognizing letters, numbers, name, address, etc.

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The Leap Pad letter factory video taught my son the sounds the letters makes. He was 3 and had watched it 3 times within a 2 week period and could tell me every single one. I think it was about then that he started writing his letters too.

Now at 4.5 he can write all his letters. He LOVES to spell things. He sounds them out. My sister was told not to correct her 7 year old's spelling so I let my son write a letter to his daddy last week when he was out of town. He wrote DADE for Daddy. MOMU for Momma. He wrote I LV YU for I love yout. He did pretty good. I have made little cards for him in the past with 3 letter words and before I could laminate them he would finish reading it. It was almost a waste of my time. He knows how to spell his name and his brothers names. Yesterday I decided to print off some words so that he could read them. I included Mommy, Daddy, our last name, his brothers names, You, etc. He's already reading them. I wish I could take credit, but he just seems to soak this stuff in. It's hard trying to come up with new ideas of things to challenge him. Right now we're trying the reading books.

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I can do all things through CHRIST who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13