Beginning Sounds with Winter — Letter M

Begin with mittens and listen to its first sound. This sheet asks the child to find every one of the winter things that starts the same way as M — mittens — and mark them. The point is the sound at the front of each word and the letter M it belongs to, the Kindergarten letter-sound link, set in a scene mixing snow, a mitten and a scarf so the child sifts many opening sounds to find M's.

Linking the letter M to the sound it makes is the bedrock of Kindergarten reading, and this hunt practises it directly: the child hears the first sound of mittens and decides it belongs to M. This is letter-SOUND work, not letter-shape recognition — a child has to know what M sounds like, then catch that sound at the start of words like mittens, long before they could read those words on their own.

Children who enjoy hunting the winter things settle into saying each picture and listening for the M sound, and every match is a small win. When M feels easy, try the beginning sounds in the B-sound pictures in winter, or the C-sound pictures in winter. You can also browse every beginning-sounds worksheet or the whole winter things collection for kindergarten — each sheet prints cleanly or plays online for free, and the more first sounds a child hunts, the quicker the link between a sound and its letter becomes automatic.