Beginning Sounds with Breakfast — Letter D

Find the D sound among the breakfast foods. The child works across the scene, saying each picture and keeping the ones that begin with D — donut. It is listening, not looking: donut starts with D's sound, so it is marked, while an egg, a pancake and a banana 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.

To find what begins with D, a child must say each picture and isolate its first sound, then judge whether it matches D. That is the heart of early phonics — knowing the sound a letter makes and catching it at the front of words like donut. The varied an egg, a pancake and a banana keep a wide set of opening sounds in play, so the work never narrows to one rehearsed answer; the child really has to listen.

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