Ready to print, these alphabet wheels are perfect for preschoolers or primary aged children learning their beginning letter sounds.
Working in an Early Years classroom, hands-on materials are a must. Countless studies tell us young children learn best through play but how to best
As a classroom teacher, I'm constantly looking for those areas that my students need further exposure too.
One concept my class still needs is more opportunities to practice differentiating between initial letter sounds in words.
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Why?
Because they're a fun, often hands-on way to engage young children in practicing early literacy concepts in a smaller group setting.
Knowing some of my students are still learning to identify beginning letter sounds, I've recently created these new initial sound alphabet circles for our literacy rotations.
Each mat has a upper case and lower case letter displayed in the middle of the mat
in large clear print and there is a individual mat for every letter of the alphabet.
To use them, I encourage the children to firstly trace each letter with their finger.
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After tracing the letters with their finger, they can then trace each letter with a whiteboard marker using the prompts in the letters to help them with the correct letter formation.
Laminating the cards helps protect them for longer in a busy classroom but also allows us to write on them when we want.
Many children are still not confident recognising upper case letters so while we use these printable cards to target that in our literacy centres, having the upper and lower case letter on each card help reinforce this again.
After practicing their handwriting, the children can then work on identifying the words that share their beginning letter with the one feature on the card.
I encourage my students to say each word aloud to themselves quietly to see if they can hear the same initial sound each of the letters makes in words.
We're often trying to build up fine motor strength and control in the first years at school so once the children find the match, they can place a peg over that picture.
Each card includes a few words that don't start with the targeted sound which means children to differentiate between the sounds before deciding on the correct sound.
Our initial sound alphabet mats do the same task but require children to choose between even more sounds.These beginning letter sound circles are a nice transition from our initial sound cards to our initial sound alphabet mats.
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