Beginning Letter Sound Flash Card Printable

I made these little cards just using clip art from google and Microsoft Publisher, printing them, and then coloring them with colored pencils (the color part of our printer is permanently on the fritz).  They have the uppercase and lowercase letter, as well as 3 or 4 pictures of objects that start with that letter.  If it was a letter that had various beginning letter sounds I tried to include examples of each.  (For example: Ii - ice cream and iguana).  For now, M has been using these just to review, but I'll be printing a second set soon and we'll use them for matching activities also.  If you find another way to use these, please let me know!

Beginning Letter Sounds

Alphabet Bingo

I found this great little game in the $1 bin at Target.  The age range was 5-7, but I modified it a little bit so that it was more of a letter and beginning letter sound recognition for M.  You could easily re-create this by printing letters in a grid on cardstock and using dot markers or math manipulatives as markers.

Theme: Literacy

Materials: bingo style cards with random letters printed in each square, bingo markers (buttons, pebbles, math manipulatives, dot markers, etc)

How to:  You can adjust this to your own child's level.  We started off with me calling out a letter and M putting a marker on that letter.  Then I started saying words and asking her to put the marker on the letter that word began with (e.g. "Which letter does Monkey -mmm mmm monkey- start with?").  For older children you can also ask what letters are missing in a certain word.

Beginning Letter Sound Match

Lately M has been starting to show signs of moving forward in her literacy lessons. She's pretty much mastered uppercase letter recognition, so I decided to move forward and start working on beginning letter sounds.

Unfortunately she's not quite there yet. She tricked me! It seems that she was memorizing instead of understanding the sound of the letters. She knows what letters the words that we've reviewed with her begin with, but if it's a different word, she doesn't understand. For example, she knows kite begins with "k" because that's the word we usually use. When I showed her keys, she kept insisting that keys didn't belong with k, only kite.

We'll have to work more on recognizing the letter sounds before we do another activity like this, but if you have an older or more advanced child this is a good activity for reinforcement and review.

Beginning Letter Sound Match

Theme: Literacy

Materials: Foam, magnet, or printed letters, various toys/things from around your house

How to: Place one letter on your work surface with three objects that all start with different letters. Have your child pick the correct object that starts with the correct letter sound. In the picture above they would pick apple for A. Continue adding different letters and objects as they work through the alphabet.

DIY Letter Puzzle

M loves her Mellisa and Doug letter puzzle, but sometimes she gets a little tired of it. I thought I would switch it up today and make a simple letter puzzle for her to play with. She really enjoyed the novelty of it, and to my surprise started saying the sounds of the letters on her own without any prompting from me. I think she's ready to move on to the next phase of reading readiness!

DIY Letter Puzzle

Theme: Literacy

Materials: Wooden letters or letter magnets, piece of paper, pen

How to: Trace the letters with a pen ahead of time and have your child match the letters to their outlines.

Source: The Activity Mom

Errand Letter Hunt

We had an early morning checkup for R today so I was looking for a way to keep M entertained while the focus was on her brother. I was worried that she would have a harder time identifying letters in an unfamiliar settting but she did great!

Errand Letter Hunt

Theme: Literacy

Materials: Notebook or notepad w/ letters written on them, stickers or crayon

How to: Every time your child see's a letter that she recognizes while you are out running errands she can place a sticker or mark next to that letter in the notebook.

Source: No Time for Flashcards

Word Search ABC's

I love the simplicity of this activity, yet it's not something I would have thought to try. Just goes to show you that there are plenty of ways to make a toy or book for older children more appropriate for toddlers.

Word Search ABC's

Theme:Literacy

Materials: Word search, crayons

How to: Call out a letter and have your child find and scribble over any of that letter they can find with crayons.

Source: Little Family Fun

Alphabet Notebook

Today we got started on a little project that will probably be ongoing. It's a little notebook that has each letter (uppercase) printed on it's own separate page. Whenever M finds a letter she recognizes in the mail or a magazine, we'll cut them out and stick them on the correct page in her alphabet notebook.

Alphabet Notebook

Theme: Literacy

Materials: Notebook, 26 pages each printed with a large letter, magazines/mail/stickers, scissors, tape runner or glue

How to: Cut letters out of your materials and have your child add them to the correct page using the glue or tape. M doesn't have the manual dexterity to cut or add tape yet so I did that for her. If you have an older child, they can do those tasks on their own, as well as work on lowercase letters instead of just uppercase.

Source: Inspired by 1+1+1=1