Beginning Sounds with Easter — Letter R

Find the R sound among the Easter things. The child works across the scene, saying each picture and keeping the ones that begin with R — ribbon and rainbow. It is listening, not looking: ribbon starts with R's sound, so it is marked, while an egg, a bunny and a basket 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.

Hearing the opening sound of a spoken word and tying it to a letter is exactly the letter-sound correspondence Kindergarten readers build. Marking the Easter things that begin with R rehearses it many times: say ribbon, listen to its start, match R. Because the child works from pictures and their own voice, no reading is needed — just the ear and the growing sense that R stands for one particular sound.

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 B-sound pictures in easter, or the C-sound pictures in easter. The full Easter 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.