Beginning Sounds with Animals — Letter I

Which animals begin with I? On this Kindergarten worksheet the child says each picture and keeps the ones that start with I's sound — iguana. Sounding out the start of iguana and deciding whether it matches the letter I is letter-sound work, the bedrock of reading. The scene is full of a cat, a sheep and a hen, so there are plenty of first sounds to compare against I.

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

Once a child can pick the I sound out of a word like iguana, that same careful listening works everywhere. When this sheet feels easy, move on to the A-sound pictures in animals, or the B-sound pictures in animals. Every beginning-sounds worksheet and the full animals 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.