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

It is important that preschoolers not only learn the name of the letters, but also the sounds the different letters make. Once they know this, they can understand that words are made of different sounds put together. This knowledge will help them make up the connection between the oral and written language, which later on will transform into the ability to read and write.

Other teachers might not agree with me, but I like to introduce the name and sound of the letters at the same time, and also the uppercase and lowercase of those letters. I think that way I help preschoolers understand that letters have sounds, and that putting sounds together form words. This is phonemic awareness, a skill that is 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 with nine pictures each for a total of 27 different pictures, 26 alphabet tiles (one for each letter of the alphabet), and 27 tiles each with one word that represent each of the pictures.

What to Do

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

To get the activity ready you only need:

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

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 is great to strengthen 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 are interested in adding to your collection, just click on the book pictures and it will take you directly to my affiliate link, for your convenience.

Pin It For Later

If are you 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 for later.

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 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 as well. 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.