Beginning Sounds with Animals — Letter P

Find the P sound among the animals. The child works across the scene, saying each picture and keeping the ones that begin with P — panda, pig and penguin. It is listening, not looking: panda starts with P's sound, so it is marked, while a cat, a sheep and a hen that begin differently are left. Matching a word's opening sound to its letter is the Kindergarten phonics move this rehearses, one picture at a time.

Producing the match — deciding that panda begins with P — asks a child to do real phonics: hold the sound P makes in mind and test each picture's opening against it. Because the animals include names that begin other ways, the child cannot guess; they have to listen. That careful sound-by-sound checking against the letter P is precisely what Kindergarten reading is built on.

Hunting a scene of animals for the letter P is the kind of quiet phonics that adds up fast. After P, keep the listening going with the A-sound pictures in animals, or the B-sound pictures in animals. The whole animals collection and every beginning-sounds sheet print cleanly or play free online for kindergarten — and the more opening sounds a child sorts, the more automatic the sound-to-letter link becomes.