Phonics

March 3, 2023

Free Beginning Sounds Worksheets pdf for Kindergarten and First Grade

Help kids work on learning the sounds letters make with these super cute, free printable, beginning sounds worksheets. These initial sounds worksheet pages help pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade students practice matching letters with their phonemic sound. There are four different beginning sounds activities in this NO PREP beginning sound worksheets for kindergarten. Simply print pdf file with beginning sounds worksheets free and you are ready to work on kindergarten phonics!

Beginning Sounds Worksheets

Do your children need to work on phonological awareness? Our beginning sounds worksheets target readers who are starting to sound out words. They are just right for kindergarteners and grade 1 students. Today we are focusing on phonological awareness with our beginning letter sounds worksheets. How is reading going in your homeschool? One thing’s for sure, reading is one of the most important skills that our kids need to develop. It provides the foundation for everything else. One of the most important jobs we have as a parent is to get our kids reading.

Beginning sounds worksheets pdf

Start by scrolling to the bottom of the post, under the terms of use, and click on the text link that says >> _____ <<. The beginning sounds worksheets pdf file will open in a new window for you to save the freebie and print the template.

Why Is It Important To Work on Phonological Awareness?

Before we take a good look the worksheets, lets go back to basics. Why is it important to work on phonological awareness? Have you ever thought about all the skills that are required to read? It is quite astonishing really. That is why a balanced reading program will include so many different aspects. Learning sight words, phonics, and phonological awareness.

Here’s the deal. Phonological awareness is probably the single most important skill that your child needs to develop as they learn to read.

What on earth is phonological awareness you ask? Basically, it means being able to hear, recognize and work with phenomes. Phenomes are the smallest unit of sounds in any given language. We cannot emphasize enough how important this is. In a recently published study, phonological awareness scores were shown to be strongly connected to how well students would do at reading 11 years later. Basically, Kindergarten kids who did well in phonological awareness tests scored higher on reading tests 11 years later. Other factors such as scoring highly in vocabulary development, word recognition, and spelling achievement did not seem to make a difference in reading ability later. It makes sense doesn’t it? When a child can hear the individual sounds in a word and associate those sound with letters, they are well on their way to reading. Everything else just builds fluency.

Beginning sound worksheets pdf

With this in mind, we have designed some engaging beginning sounds worksheets for kindergarten pdf to help kids to practice beginning sounds. And the best part? Just print and go. Our phonics beginning sounds worksheets will help your child practice phenome isolation. The goal is for your child to start isolating and identifying sounds in words. Once they can do that, they can start blending those sounds and sounding out words. We want our children to develop that confidence in reading. Giving them lots of practice in connecting letters with the sounds is key. Beginning sounds are a good place to start, because they are the easiest sounds for new readers to hear.

Beginning sounds worksheets for kindergarten pdf

There are 4 kinds of worksheets in our pack. They all help children to practice the beginning sounds of easy words. We’ve tried to stick with simple CVC words.

1. Cut and Paste

The first two worksheets involve a cut and paste activity. Have you noticed how much kids love these? I think it makes the learning activity more active and hands on. Always a good thing for this age group. The worksheets have 7 pictures and 7 corresponding boxes. Each box is assigned a letter. Students are invited to say each letter aloud and identify which picture starts with that sound.

2 &3 The Mystery of the Missing Letter

The second set of worksheets are rather fun. Each one has six pictures with words underneath. But the words have lost their first letters. The letters are jumbled up at the bottom of the sheet. Children are tasked with matching the first letters with the correct picture. Children say the name of each item out loud, identify the beginning sounds, and then write in the first letters. The third set of worksheets are similar. This time the first letters are not provided.

Letter sounds worksheets pdf

4. Color the Items

The fourth set have five rows of pictures and a letter. Each row has four items and two of them begin with the sound identified at the start of the row. Children are asked to color in the two items that start with the correct beginning sounds. Encourage your child to talk aloud as they do these worksheets. It will really help them identify the beginning sounds. You can help by pointing to the pictures, saying the word and emphasizing the first sound. “Look here is a cat. C-at. What else begins with the C sound?” Our beginning sounds worksheets are very easy to prepare- justPRINT. That’s it! We hope they help you as you work with your child on literacy skills.

Free beginning sounds worksheets for kindergarten pdf

If you follow the common core standards in your homeschool, this set of worksheets covers the following reading standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2.D Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.A Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

Beginning sounds worksheets pdf free

Practice, practice, practice. As you know, every child has their own way of learning. So, we will every tool in our homeschool literacy workbox. Here are some great hands on activities that will help. The more our children practice those beginning sounds, the easier it will become for them. Still there comes a time when you will need some beginning sounds worksheets. They are great way to assess how your child is progressing.