Beginning Sounds with Forest Creatures — Letter S

Say it, hear the start, match the letter S. The child looks over the forest creatures on this sheet and circles each one that begins with S's sound — slug, squirrel and snail. Because slug opens with that sound, it gets marked; pictures that begin another way do not. Catching the first sound of a spoken word and tying it to a letter is the heart of Kindergarten phonics, practised here across a scene of a fox, a deer and a hedgehog.

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 forest creatures for S rehearses it concretely: say each picture, hear the start, match the letter. With slug, squirrel and snail hiding among a fox, a deer and a hedgehog, the child compares many opening sounds in one sitting, and the connection between the S sound and its letter grows a little more automatic each time.

A child who hears that slug opens with the S sound is doing real reading groundwork, one picture at a time. Keep going with the A-sound pictures in forest creatures, or the B-sound pictures in forest creatures. The full forest creatures 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.