Beginning Sounds with Beach Things — Letter C

Find the C sound among the beach things. The child works across the scene, saying each picture and keeping the ones that begin with C — cabana, crab and cloud. It is listening, not looking: cabana starts with C's sound, so it is marked, while a bucket, a spade and a starfish 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.

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 beach things that begin with C rehearses it many times: say cabana, listen to its start, match C. Because the child works from pictures and their own voice, no reading is needed — just the ear and the growing sense that C stands for one particular sound.

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