Beginning Sounds with Zoo Animals — Letter E

This Kindergarten sheet is all about the sound E makes at the start of a word. The child hunts the zoo animals, says each one, and marks elephant — the names that open with E. Stretching elephant to hear its first sound and tying it to the letter E is how children learn the sound-letter links that reading will lean on, and a scene of a lion, a zebra and a giraffe supplies plenty to sort.

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

Hunting a scene of zoo animals for the letter E is the kind of quiet phonics that adds up fast. After E, keep the listening going with the A-sound pictures in zoo animals, or the B-sound pictures in zoo animals. The whole zoo animals collection and every beginning-sounds sheet print cleanly or play free online for kindergarten — and the more opening sounds a child sorts, the more automatic the sound-to-letter link becomes.