Beginning/Ending Sounds

Not a lot of time today either.  Busy busy...who isn't?  :-) So anyway...wanted to share this one activity...mainly because it's very simple.  I don't know about you but I'm always looking for new ideas and the fancier they are the more they appeal to me.  But really...it usually means more prep time for me and we all don't have enough time for that!  And also, the children do not need or expect really fancy activities.  You can make it fun by your own attitude toward it, adding a mystery component like hiding the objects/pictures around the room and so on.  But really, our own tone of voice/expressions often tend to "make or break" an activity.  :-)

In preschool, we do a LOT with letter sounds and beginning word sounds.  Toward the end of the PreK year we are adding quite a bit more of hearing the ending sounds.  It's harder for the kiddos then you would think!  When a child is accurate in sorting the beginning and ending sounds we move onto middle sounds as well.  These types of activities can be done informally, during transition times, on a car ride, while grocery shopping and so on.  Today we did a relatively simple listening activity.  Listening and hearing the sounds will allow them to be successful in "sounding out" words. Funny thing!  :-) Our focus letter formation character was Dd, which we practiced writing in dirt.   We had read The Napping House by Audrey Wood today and so that also led into talking about the short e CVC words (we explored with moveable letters using the vowel e and writing a list of real and nonsense words) as well as listening for the /d/ in bed.  There was also a dog as a character so we used the /d/og and be/d/ to sort our columns.  I simply printed off pictures that started with /d/ and ended with /d/ and we went through them individually and sorted into their correct column. 

Pretty simple!  I used sticky tack instead of laminating and putting magnets on them.  You can do this with any sound.  You can also sort your space into 3 columns if your child is ready for that (the middle column being for a middle sound...so dog, candle, bed).  If your child is still working on the beginning sound you can have 2 columns with a smile face for "beginning sound" and a sad/neutral face for "not the beginning sound".  If you do this, I suggest that the words that do not have your focus sound as a beginning sound do not have that sound anywhere in the word.  :-) 

Well, it feels like I'm doing more rattling then explaining well...sorry.  Hope it all makes sense.  Have a lovely week!  Sounds like it's suppose to be beautiful.  Hope so!  I have a brother in law, sister, and son all have a birthday this week and then Father's Day is on Sunday.  Hoping to have some company!  :-)  Want it nice since we have a small house.  Better for us all if the kids can be outside!  Oh, and we just got an inflatable pool/slide.  Been wanting one for quite awhile.  So maybe the kids will get to try it out this weekend!  The inflatable bouncer was a great investment.  Now we'll see about the pool.  :-)