Beginning Sounds with Household Things — Letter A

Say it, hear the start, match the letter A. The child looks over the household things on this sheet and circles each one that begins with A's sound — armchair and alarm clock. Because armchair opens with that sound, it gets marked; pictures that begin another way do not. Catching the first sound of a spoken word and tying it to a letter is the heart of Kindergarten phonics, practised here across a scene of a lamp, a chair and a clock.

Hearing the opening sound of a spoken word and tying it to a letter is exactly the letter-sound correspondence Kindergarten readers build. Marking the household things that begin with A rehearses it many times: say armchair, listen to its start, match A. Because the child works from pictures and their own voice, no reading is needed — just the ear and the growing sense that A stands for one particular sound.

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