8 Beginning Sound Activities that will kickstart kids into becoming strong readers!

Beginning sound activities focus on teaching the first sounds of every word and/letter. Reading is tricky business. Kids are supposed to go from knowing words, to learning a whole jumble of non-intuitive ideas to put together the concept of reading. 24 Letters, their names as well as their sounds, rules about how they fit together and make words, and how those words make sentences, to understanding concepts about print. For us adults, it seems “normal”. In English, we pick up a book, read the title, then go to the first page and read from left to right. We pause when there’s a comma and our voices go up when there’s an exclamation mark. For kids, NONE of this is innate. That’s one reason we read books of any kind to our kids. We are teaching these fundamental concepts through repetition. Kids see how we hold books, treat books and what we are looking at in the books. Even after all this modelling, kids still need to be told and taught these basic concepts. So this is why one of the critical steps on the journey to becoming readers is breaking words down to their core and focusing on beginning sounds. This is the start to strong phonemic awareness and phonics! In this blog I’m going to be sharing 8, hands-on, engaging beginning sound activities that will be sure to give a head start to new (and struggling) readers!

8 Beginning Sound activities that will kickstart kids phonics and reading skills. Beginning sounds are the first step to phonological awareness and building a strong foundation of literacy skills.

Initial sounds Activities

Kids (and adults) learn by doing. Teaching beginning sounds should be done in a multi-faceted way. Through exploration, hands-on learning and through *some* writing activities. This activity is for after you have learned some or all of the letter sounds : p, d, b, g, v, f, a, k, v, & t. Even though we aren’t halfway through the alphabet, it is time to introduce these sounds + a vowel. We can start putting the sounds together to make words. Wild right?! Long gone are the days that we wait to learn the entire alphabet before learning how to read!

How to use this activity:

I love using a white board for this activity (optional).
Using the sounds you’ve already taught, isolate 4-5 letters to start off with.
Go over each sound first so they are fresh in everyone’s head.
Pick a word family (like “at”). Slowly put a different letter sound in front of the base word “at”.
Go through all 5 letters until the child can read it more fluently. I like to say “look at you! You are reading!” And they are!!

This is one of my favourite initial sound activities. Isolating sounds and making words by switching sounds frequently challenges kids to really understand the sounds/letters. There's no guessing in reading when you use this amazing phonics strategy!

Hands-on Phonics activities:

This is another favourite of mine! Have kids match the pictures and sounds using sticky notes! I like to add few extras to throw them off a bit 😉 . If this was the first time we were doing this activity, I would not start with so many pictures. Start with a few and then add more pictures as they learn. Why is this such a great activity? We don’t want kids to just learn the letter sounds. We want them to make connections to words and know that letter sounds (and letters) when put together, have meaning (they make words!)

Beginning Sound Sound Match is such a fun way to strengthen phonological skills and phonics through this tactile beginning sound game! Match the letters to the pictures.

beginning sound Sort:

Okay, so we’ve done the sticky notes and the bingo dabbers, now onto something that further strengthens those phonics skills! Using my letter of the week (bundle), kids match the pictures to each other. This is just another way for kids to really make the connection between the new sounds that they’ve learned and words.

Beginning sounds picture match. Through this Letter of the Week activity, kids match the pictures to each other while learning the proper sounds by matching sounds and pictures. — These beginning sound picture cards are from my AMAZING + HUGE Letter of the week bundle that can be found HERE!

Beginning letter sounds worksheets:

I know I know. Some people are anti-worksheets and some are all for them. I’m somewhere in the middle! I think they’re really helpful, especially when they’re not the only type of learning. This beginning sound activity is a fan favourite! Kids LOVE using bingo dabbers to identify the letters and then they match the letter sounds to the pictures!

These Kindergarten Alphabet Worksheets are a great way to practice beginning sounds through phonemic awareness. — You can find these Kindergarten Alphabet Worksheets **HERE**! If you would rather buy them directly from my website, please send me an email : kaley@leapingintolearning.com

More Beginning Sounds Worksheets for Kindergarten:

Another really fun activity is having kids cut out each picture and paste them on the right side. This is a great activity because kids are physically putting the sounds in the correct spots. They are also working on their fine motor through cutting, which is key that they build those very important little hand muscles.

One of my favourite Beginning Sound activities are these cut and paste printable alphabet worksheets! Fine motor + phonological awareness. What more can you ask for? — You can find these Printable Alphabet Worksheets here!

Beginning Sounds Games

Okay, so we all know kids love playing games on tablets and computers. Let’s be real here- online devices also help us! As a teacher, it’s so helpful to be able to differentiate activities by giving kids some games to play and as a mom- the same thing! I am not a big fan of just giving them a tablet and telling them to just go play. The internet is a dangerous place and I do like to limit my kids screen time a bit. Otherwise they’ll be on there forever! These online beginning sound games are GREAT for giving kids the independence to play on their own while also taking part in purposeful learning.

Beginning Sounds online games are a great way to work on initial sounds. These online cards are interactive and give immediate feedback to kids. You can also track kids progress! — These beginning sound games are a fun way for kids to engage on their tablets and/or computers in a purposeful way. Grab these games here!

Beginning Sound Clip Cards:

Last but definitely not least, these are ALWAYS a crowd pleaser. Use these at a centre where kids can clip the correct sounds. I also like to use these with my kids at home to reinforce letter sounds that they’ve learned at school. Another great way to engage kids through hands-on learning while building their phonological awareness!

These Beginning Sound Task cards are one of my favourite phonics activities to date! There are almost 500 task cards (upper + lowercase). Grab them here!

So there you have it. 8 great activities to learn beginning sounds! Each one targeting different intelligences and all excellent for reinforcing this critical concept for our brand new readers!