Beginning Sounds with Desserts and Sweets — Letter D

Begin with donut and listen to its first sound. This sheet asks the child to find every one of the sweet treats that starts the same way as D — donut — and mark them. The point is the sound at the front of each word and the letter D it belongs to, the Kindergarten letter-sound link, set in a scene mixing a cupcake, a lollipop and a pie so the child sifts many opening sounds to find D's.

Listening for a word's first sound and matching it to a letter is foundational phonics — the link a child needs before sounding words out. Hunting the sweet treats for D rehearses it concretely: say each picture, hear the start, match the letter. With donut hiding among a cupcake, a lollipop and a pie, the child compares many opening sounds in one sitting, and the connection between the D sound and its letter grows a little more automatic each time.

A child who hears that donut opens with the D sound is doing real reading groundwork, one picture at a time. Keep going with the C-sound pictures in desserts and sweets, or the G-sound pictures in desserts and sweets. The full sweet treats 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.