Match the sound of the letter with the sound of the word

I have spent a fair amount of time teaching the letter names and sounds to William.  But I stressed more the name, rather than the sound.  This is because by learning letter names he was also hearing the sounds (of most letters).

However, recently when I ask William to do something, he’ll reply by saying something silly by manipulating the sounds of what I’d just said.  For example, if I say to William, “Let’s go upstairs and brush your teeth,” he might respond with something like, “You go upstairs and frush your feeth.”  Frush and feeth are what educators call nonsense words, but the way William manipulated the original words to make up his own silly words show he is ready for some very basic and simple phonemic awareness practice and possibly some basic phonics.

So, I came up with this object to sound matching activity and was quite surprised at William’s performance.

Supplies needed are some sort of letter manipulative, such as cards, tiles, ect., and some toys your child is very familiar with.  I chose to use William’s plastic farm animals.

I began by asking William to choose and animal and place it on the work mat.  I asked him to name the animal.

Older children (perhaps six years or older) can easily look through the entire alphabet and pick out which of the twenty-six letters is at the beginning of the word “rooster”.  However, William looses interests when the entire alphabet is staring up at him.  Plus, William just turned three so despite the fact he knows nearly all his letter names and sounds, associating sounds with words/objects (in this case a farm animal) could still prove to be very difficult.  This is how I came to the choice to keep it simple by only giving William two letter options from which to choose.

Near the end of our practice, if a sound was very familiar, like the /k/ in cow, I could throw in a third letter and William was still able to choose the correct letter after a few seconds of deliberation.  Eventually, he will reach the point where he can automatically match objects with their beginning sounds.

Note: I did not include animals who’s names began with digraphs, like the /sh/ sound in sheep, or the /ch/ sound in chicken.  These sounds have not been introduced to William (and won’t be for a long while), so it wouldn’t have made sense to include those animals.  Although, for older kindergarten students of those in first or second grade it would be appropriate to include digraph tiles to extend this activity.

Phonics. It begins with letter sounds and developmentally speaking, the beginning letter sound is typically what kids hear and recognize first {pun intended}. You can see this in kids’ invented spellings of words. A word such as bed might only be spelled B. Car may only be C. This is completely normal and part of spelling and literacy development.

Beginning letter sound matching games, like the one we’re sharing today, are a great way to get kids listening for and recognizing those sounds. I’m wrapping up our 2nd annual LEGO Week with some DUPLO Beginning Letter Sound Matching {with a FREE printable at the end.}

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DUPLO Beginning Letter Sound Matching

I prepared our DUPLO bricks for this activity the same exact way that I did for our DUPLO Rhyming Word Matching earlier this week, except I put letters on one side and pictures on the other side {many of these letter pictures are the same ones found in Learning the Alphabet, ABC printable packs for learning letters and their sounds.

I pulled apart the matches and set the letters in one group and the pictures in another. I only started with 6 pairs at first. And I started with letters in my daughter’s name and letters that she knew better.

It didn’t take but a second for her to realize that like our DUPLO Rhyming Word Matching, the colors also matched. She began matching them based on color alone. We {including my mom, who was helping her} encouraged her to stop and listen to make sure the letter sound matched each picture.

While she knows most all her letter names, she only knows a handful of letter sounds at 3 years, 2 months; so this activity was more for modeling and hands-on fun with letter sounds than making sure she has mastered her letter sounds.

Later in the day, I mixed up some of the pictures and letters to make it so the beginning letter sound matches weren’t color coordinated. She wasn’t so sure about this. First, she did this, absolutely convinced she had them matched correctly.

I showed her that the colors didn’t match up anymore, that we’d have to listen for the letter sound at the beginning of each word. She was willing to match a few like this, but then told me it wasn’t right and tried changing them all back. Seems she has a touch of Type A personality, like her mama. 🙂

More Ideas You May Enjoy:

• LEGO Alphabet Matching Game
• DUPLO Rhyming Word Matching

• Learning the Alphabet, printable ABC packs
• Counting Syllables with LEGO Blocks
• 18 Ways to Use LEGOs to Teach Literacy

• Alphabet Sounds Learning App features FOUR LEVELS of interactive play for alphabet sounds and more! It’s an app that will definitely GROW with your preschooler.

Enjoy Teaching!
~Becky