Beginning Sounds with Christmas — Letter S

A first-sound sorting game with the letter S: the child scans the Christmas things and marks star, santa and stocking, the names that begin with the sound S stands for. They say star, hear its opening sound, and match it to S — not by finding a letter on the page but by listening. That sound-to-letter connection is exactly what Kindergarten readers are building, and a scene of a tree, a bauble and a stocking keeps it concrete.

To find what begins with S, a child must say each picture and isolate its first sound, then judge whether it matches S. That is the heart of early phonics — knowing the sound a letter makes and catching it at the front of words like star. The varied a tree, a bauble and a stocking 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 S sound out of a word like star, that same careful listening works everywhere. When this sheet feels easy, move on to the A-sound pictures in christmas, or the B-sound pictures in christmas. Every beginning-sounds worksheet and the full Christmas 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.