Beginning Sounds with Insects and Bugs — Letter W

Begin with worm and listen to its first sound. This sheet asks the child to find every one of the bugs that starts the same way as W — worm and wasp — and mark them. The point is the sound at the front of each word and the letter W it belongs to, the Kindergarten letter-sound link, set in a scene mixing an ant, a bee and a ladybug so the child sifts many opening sounds to find W's.

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 bugs that begin with W rehearses it many times: say worm, listen to its start, match W. Because the child works from pictures and their own voice, no reading is needed — just the ear and the growing sense that W stands for one particular sound.

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