Beginning Sounds with Forest Creatures — Letter P

Which forest creatures begin with P? On this Kindergarten worksheet the child says each picture and keeps the ones that start with P's sound — porcupine. Sounding out the start of porcupine and deciding whether it matches the letter P is letter-sound work, the bedrock of reading. The scene is full of a fox, a deer and a hedgehog, so there are plenty of first sounds to compare against P.

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

Once a child can pick the P sound out of a word like porcupine, that same careful listening works everywhere. When this sheet feels easy, move on to the A-sound pictures in forest creatures, or the B-sound pictures in forest creatures. Every beginning-sounds worksheet and the full forest creatures 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.