Beginning Sounds with Accessories — Letter W

Begin with watch and listen to its first sound. This sheet asks the child to find every one of the accessories that starts the same way as W — watch and whistle — and mark them. The point is the sound at the front of each word and the letter W it belongs to, the Kindergarten letter-sound link, set in a scene mixing hats, belts and a scarf so the child sifts many opening sounds to find W's.

Linking the letter W to the sound it makes is the bedrock of Kindergarten reading, and this hunt practises it directly: the child hears the first sound of watch and decides it belongs to W. This is letter-SOUND work, not letter-shape recognition — a child has to know what W sounds like, then catch that sound at the start of words like watch and whistle, long before they could read those words on their own.

Once a child can pick the W sound out of a word like watch, that same careful listening works everywhere. When this sheet feels easy, move on to the A-sound pictures in accessories, or the B-sound pictures in accessories. Every beginning-sounds worksheet and the full accessories set are free to print or play online for kindergarten, and each first sound a child names makes the next letter that little bit quicker to catch.