Looking for letter sound activity pages? Try these!
My Three (three months shy of four years) loves doing learning activities with me, and asks for them nearly every day. She loved our year of letter of the week, and so did I.
Playful activities are a lot of fun!
Now that she is close to four, I’m working at helping her master the letter sounds. Because while she recognizes almost any letter (upper or lowercase) by sight, the sounds haven’t come as easily.
All of her four older siblings knew their sounds inside and out by this age, so it’s a new challenge for me.
I’ve learned that it’s not just a memory issue; it’s a phonemic awareness challenge. She has a hard time separating a beginning sound from a word.
For example:
If I ask her if car starts with /m/, she might say, “/m/, /m/, car! Yes!”
(Note: When you see a letter in brackets, such as /m/, I’m referring to the sound. So when you see /m/, think “mmmmm.”)
I created these beginning sounds activity pages a few months ago in the hopes that they would help.
They didn’t!
So I pulled them out again today, in the hopes that she’d be ready for them.
The answer?
Well, yes and no.
First, let me explain my reasoning behind the activity pages. I kept them super simple. Each page focuses on hearing just one letter sound. There are eight pictures. Learners glue the four pictures that begin wtih the focus letter’s sound under the smiley face. They glue the four letters that don’t begin with the letter’s sound under the sad face.
Today I chose two activity sheets – letters M and T, because M is the first letter of my daughter’s name, and because T has a pretty easy sound to hear.
I asked her to name the letter at the top of the page. “M!”
“Show me the lowercase letter m.”
“What sound does letter M make?” “Mmmm!”
So far so good.
I was surprised that she wanted to cut out the pictures, and not so surprised when she cut out one and asked me to cut the rest. 🙂
For each picture, I helped her say the name and stretch or isolate that beginning sound. “Mirror! Mmmmmirror! Does that start with /m/?”
“What’s this one?”
“Bunny. /b/ /b/ bunny.” (She shook her head).
“Okay, so that one goes on the sad face side.”
“It’s not a sad face. It’s a worried face.”
She did okay with a few pictures.
But it wasn’t long before the activity kind of fell apart.
“Octopus!”
“That’s a jellyfish. /j/ /j/ jellyfish. Does that start with mmmm?”
“Yes!”
“No, let’s try again …”
And it kind of went on like that. I tried different ways of isolating the sound. I tried a pat, pat, clap motion (patting my thighs and clapping my hands): “Two! /t/ (pat) /t/ (pat) two (clap)!”
But she didn’t catch on.
So … what’s my conclusion?
She’s not developmentally ready.
So it’s a good thing I recently started a phonological awareness series. I think we need to back up and really work at the more basic skills – like syllables, rhyming, and awareness of word – before pushing those letter sounds.
But – I didn’t want to wait another six months before sharing these with you!
A caution
Please promise me you won’t photocopy one of the worksheets and pass one out to each of the students in your preschool class. Use them one-on-one if students are ready for them OR with older student who are developmentally ready for worksheets.
They might work great as a small group activity at the end of a guided reading lesson. It’s really essential that you’re helping students with these pages. I didn’t create them to be done independently, although I can’t stop you if you decide to use them that way. 🙂
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Free Alphabet Printables
Join our email list and get this free sample of alphabet activities from our membership site! Students will practice identifying and forming letters, matching upper to lowercase, and identifying beginning sounds.
