Beginning Sounds with Christmas — Letter R

This Kindergarten sheet is all about the sound R makes at the start of a word. The child hunts the Christmas things, says each one, and marks ribbon, rudolph and reindeer — the names that open with R. Stretching ribbon to hear its first sound and tying it to the letter R is how children learn the sound-letter links that reading will lean on, and a scene of a tree, a bauble and a stocking supplies plenty to sort.

Producing the match — deciding that ribbon begins with R — asks a child to do real phonics: hold the sound R makes in mind and test each picture's opening against it. Because the Christmas things include names that begin other ways, the child cannot guess; they have to listen. That careful sound-by-sound checking against the letter R is precisely what Kindergarten reading is built on.

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