Beginning Sounds with Christmas — Letter A

Here the target letter is A, and the child circles the Christmas things that begin with its sound. They say a picture — angel — stretch out its first sound, and decide whether it matches A. The scene mixes a tree, a bauble and a stocking, so the ear has to work: angel begin with A while the rest do not. Hearing the opening sound, not spotting a letter shape, is the whole game.

Matching a sound to its letter is what eventually lets a child decode words, and it starts with beginning sounds like A's. This sheet has the child hear the opening of each picture — angel and the rest of the Christmas things — and connect it to A. A scene of a tree, a bauble and a stocking offers many first sounds, so the sound-letter link gets rehearsed across a rich mix of words rather than drilled one at a time.

A child who hears that angel opens with the A sound is doing real reading groundwork, one picture at a time. Keep going with the B-sound pictures in christmas, or the C-sound pictures in christmas. The full Christmas 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.