Winter Beginning Sounds Mats for Preschoolers

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This Winter Beginning Sounds Mats is a fun, hands-on activity that will help preschoolers work on identifying beginning sounds and making letter-sound connections.

Importance of Beginning Sounds

Preschoolers must learn not only the names of the letters but also the sounds the different letters make. Once they know this, they can understand that words are made of other sounds. This knowledge will help them make the connection between oral and written language, which will later transform into the ability to read and write.

Other teachers might disagree with me, but I would like to introduce the names and sounds of the letters simultaneously, as well as the uppercase and lowercase letters. This can help preschoolers understand that letters have sounds and that putting sounds together forms words. This is phonemic awareness, a skill necessary to develop reading and writing abilities by recognizing the sounds that form words.

Winter Beginning Sounds Activity

This low-prep, simple, and FREE activity comes with three mats, each with nine pictures, for a total of 27 different images, 26 alphabet tiles (one for each letter of the alphabet), and 27 tiles, each with one word representing each of the pictures.

To get the activity ready, you only need:

Winter Beginning Sounds printable (found at the end of this post).
Printer.
White cardstock.
Scissors.
Laminator.
Laminator Pouches.

Print all the pages using white cardstock. Laminate the mats. Cut out the letters and word tiles and laminate them to make them last longer.

Where to Use The Mats

These Winter Beginning Sound Mats can be used in many ways such as:

Small group activity.
Literacy and Writing Center option.
Take home game.
Quiet area option

This activity strengthens the children’s phonological awareness, concentration, vocabulary, one-to-one correspondence, pre-reading, and fine motor skills.

How to Use Them

Give the child one of the pages. Have the child say the name of the picture in each square, and found the tile with the letter that represents the beginning sound, and places the square on top of the picture. For more advanced children, you can add the word tiles and use them instead of the alphabet tiles, or you can use both.

Remember that the purpose is to encourage your children to work on the beginning sound recognition, not to stress them out and abandon the activity.

Books About Winter

You know I’m always talking about reading to your children and keeping your library, centers, and book baskets full of good books for them. You must mix fiction and non-fiction books, especially when you are talking about seasons, animals, flowers, and things of that nature.

Today I wanted to offer you some examples of good books that you can add to your classroom or home, with winter in mind. All of these books are found at your local library, used books store, and Amazon. If you want to add to your collection, click on the titles, and it will take you directly to my affiliate link for your convenience.

The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll is a fun story about Clayton and Desmond’s collaboration to build the biggest snowman ever for the town’s contest.

Ten Sparkly Snowflakes by Tiger Tales. A cut math book that used woodland animals to show children how the number of snowflakes decreases from 10 to 1 with each turn of the page.

Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft. This book is a little advanced for preschoolers, but it can help you introduce your kids to basic science ideas during discussions about the seasons and animals.

Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter by Kenard Pak. A brother and sister will take children on a journey as they explore nature and stroll through their twinkling town, greeting all the signs of the coming winter.

What’s a Season: Winter by Kelly Grettlel. With colorful, rhythmic text, this book will show your kiddos what makes winter magical and fun.

Curious About Snow by Gina Shaw. With beautiful snowflake photos, this book looks at the science behind snow, the history of record-setting blizzards and snowstorms, and how people have fun in the snow!

Pin It For Later

If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin this to one of your boards on Pinterest.

Then check my other posts for Winter and Christmas below. They all have free printables that you can add to your collection.

And don’t forget to download your FREE Winter Beginning Sounds Mats. You just have to click on the bottom below, for an immediate download.

It is my great joy to create printables for you. I hope you find them useful and that they make your lesson planning a little easier. We are almost finishing the first half of this school year, and the holidays are coming. Make this time enjoyable, not just for your preschoolers and family but also for you. Enjoy!

Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.

Love,

P.S. Please let me know if this activity works for you, and if you would like to see an article or a printable about how to make something specific, please let me know and I will try my best to create it for you. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful.