When it comes to teaching beginning sounds to young learners, I am all about variety! Over the years, I’ve found that using lots of different fun games and activities is the best way to excite those little learners and truly make letter sounds stick. If you’re looking for FUN activities to teach beginning sounds, you’re in the right place!
If you teach in the primary classroom, you likely spend a fair bit of time working on phonics activities. In the early years, beginning sounds make up a huge portion of those phonics activities. As teachers, we all know how important it is to give students plenty of opportunities to practice beginning sounds but… that can get a little repetitive if you’re not careful! To combat this, I like to use a variety of engaging games, center activities, and worksheets to help students master beginning sounds. If you’re looking for new ways to teach beginning sounds, check out my favorite activities!
1. Beginning Sounds Letter Sort
One of the best ways to help young learners identify beginning sounds is with letter sorting games.
In my classroom, I love to use a full-color letter sorting game for the literacy center. To prep for this activity, I laminate the letter mats as well as the picture card pieces.
Then, I use velcro strips so that students can easily attach each picture to the correct letter. We focus on specific sets of letters at a time to help students master those sounds.
As a follow-up activity, I also offer this printable resource to children as a black-and-white worksheet. This is a great way to check in on student comprehension and provide a review or conduct a quick assessment. For the printable pages, the activity is used exactly the same way, except students will cut and paste the pictures under the correct letter.
2. Interactive Journal Pages
Do you use interactive journal pages in your classroom? If not, these beginning sound interactive journal pages are a great way to get started. The pages we use feature 5 activities focused on a specific letter. We work on:
- letter tracing
- letter printing
- hunting letters
- drawing 2 pictures that start with the letter
- cutting and pasting pictures that make that beginning sound
After students complete their page, they can add it to a simple composition notebook. I love having a record of all the letters the students worked on in the notebooks. Plus these are a really fun project to send home once you’ve gone through all the letters in the alphabet!
3. Beginning Sound Clothespin Wheels
I love to use clothespin wheels to practice beginning sounds. These are great because you can prep them once, and use them over and over again in your classroom.
They make a quick and easy center game and help students work on fine motor skills in addition to beginning sounds.
To prep, I print and laminate the beginning sound wheels and provide kiddos with clothespins.
Students will say the letter on the center of the wheel and then use the clothespins to clip each picture that makes that beginning sound.
This activity is great for independent work and can be repeated for review.
4. Beginning Sounds Cover Up
Cover-up mats are such a fun activity for literacy centers. In my classroom, I use full-color mats with a variety of pictures on them.
Students will look at the letter highlighted on their board and use bingo chips or other small manipulatives to cover up the pictures representing that beginning sound.
Alternatively, you could also laminate these boards or pop them into dry-erase sleeves. Then, you can have students use a dry-erase marker to cross off pictures for each beginning sound.
Either one of these options will present a great way for kiddos to practice beginning sounds. I like to have students work with a partner to check their work after they complete the activity.
5. Read the Room Activities
Sometimes you just need to get those kids up and moving! Read the room is a favorite of mine when students seem a little restless.
When working on beginning sounds, we use cards with pictures and words for each letter we are focusing on. I display these cards around the room and provide students with recording sheets and clipboards.
Students will walk around the room and find the card that matches their recording sheet. They write the word on the card on their recording sheet in the correct spot.
You can use dry-erase sleeves for these activities if you’re looking to save on paper. Or, have students glue their finished recording sheets into their interactive notebooks!
Extend this activity even further by having students write a sentence using 1 word from each card.
6. Roll and Print Pages
This next activity couldn’t be easier to prep and is always a student fave! For each set of letters we are focusing on, I created roll and print pages that are to be used with dice.
To play, students will roll a die and print the corresponding letters in the correct box. Children will repeat this until all the boxes are filled.
I love that these pages are “print and go” and require no additional prep work.
Since these are easy to prepare and simple for students to understand, I like to use these for independent desk work as well as a “fast finisher” activity.
Grab foam dice to keep this activity nice and quiet as well!
7. Word Search Center
Finally, I have a super simple activity that is another great option for center time in the classroom.
The word search mats we use are perfect for young children learning to master letters. These simple word search pages each feature 6 words that all begin with the same letter. To help new readers, there are also pictures included.
I like to laminate these word search mats and use them with dry-erase makers. Kiddos will hunt for each word and circle it in the word search with their marker. This is a great activity to help children develop letter discrimination skills.
My students love these word search mats and are able to be fully independent with them, making the mats a great center-time activity!
Even More Beginning Sounds Activities
I hope you found some ideas for new ways to teach beginning sounds in your classroom. While these 7 activities are a few of my favorites, there are so many other fantastic ways to teach beginning sounds. Some of the other games and center activities you’ll find in my Beginning Sounds Bundle include:
- beginning sound mats
- dice games
- cut & paste worksheets
- word matching
- printing practice
- word search
- beginning sound cutie catchers
There’s a total of 14 fun beginning sounds activities in this resource! This wide variety of activities for every single letter in the alphabet means you can give kiddos the practice they need without losing their attention! If you’d like to check out all of these activities and see how you can easily add engagement while teaching beginning sounds, be sure to take a peek at the full bundle. This resource has everything you need to make teaching beginning sounds fun!
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