Beginning Sounds with Household Things — Letter M

On this worksheet a child sorts household things by their first sound. Given the letter M, they find mirror, mailbox and mop — the pictures that begin with the sound M stands for — among a scene of a lamp, a chair and a clock. They say mirror out loud, hear where it starts, and connect that sound to M. This is beginning-sound matching, the Kindergarten skill of linking a sound to its letter, not a search for the letter's shape.

Listening for a word's first sound and matching it to a letter is foundational phonics — the link a child needs before sounding words out. Hunting the household things for M rehearses it concretely: say each picture, hear the start, match the letter. With mirror, mailbox and mop hiding among a lamp, a chair and a clock, the child compares many opening sounds in one sitting, and the connection between the M sound and its letter grows a little more automatic each time.

A child who hears that mirror opens with the M sound is doing real reading groundwork, one picture at a time. Keep going with the A-sound pictures in household things, or the B-sound pictures in household things. The full household things collection and every beginning-sounds worksheet are free to print or play online for kindergarten, and every first sound a child catches builds toward sounding out whole words later.