Beginning Sounds with Forest Creatures — Letter R

On this worksheet a child sorts forest creatures by their first sound. Given the letter R, they find raccoon and rabbit — the pictures that begin with the sound R stands for — among a scene of a fox, a deer and a hedgehog. They say raccoon out loud, hear where it starts, and connect that sound to R. This is beginning-sound matching, the Kindergarten skill of linking a sound to its letter, not a search for the letter's shape.

To find what begins with R, a child must say each picture and isolate its first sound, then judge whether it matches R. That is the heart of early phonics — knowing the sound a letter makes and catching it at the front of words like raccoon. The varied a fox, a deer and a hedgehog keep a wide set of opening sounds in play, so the work never narrows to one rehearsed answer; the child really has to listen.

Listening for R across a scene of forest creatures turns phonics into a game, and finishing one letter invites the next. Try the A-sound pictures in forest creatures, or the B-sound pictures in forest creatures. Browse all the beginning-sounds worksheets or the entire forest creatures set, free to print or play online for kindergarten, and watch how quickly a child starts catching the first sound in a word on their own.