Initial/ Final sounds

Our kindergarten levels out for our reading block.
This year, I have the higher leveled kids. We just started switching a few days ago for this school year, so I'm still trying to figure out exactly where all of my kids are and what they are capable of in terms of reading, writing and initial/ final sounds.

Today we worked on initial and final sounds during our reading block. It was more of a test to see how much the kids already knew. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised that my kids could identify beginning and ending sounds. I did a quick worksheet with beginning and ending sounds of the letter 'P'. I decided to take it a little further. I wanted the kids to generate a list of words that begin with the P sound and ones that ended with a P sound.
 
Here's the list of the words of the kids came up with that started with the letter 'P'.

Here's the rest of the words that the kids generated that ended with the letter 'P'.
I quickly had the discussion with the kids that although 'grape' sounds like it ends with a 'p' it really ends on an 'e'..... I got a few blank stares!
 
While the words that have ending sounds of the letter 'p' were a little more difficult for them, they still did rather well. I will take this further tomorrow and have the students draw pictures and write sentences using these words.

When it came to small group time today, I decided to pull students one-on-one to see who really knew beginning sounds.

This is a really cool game by Lakeshore.
 
These are the pieces and the magnetic board. I love that the pieces are very thick foam. 
They have stood up to many kids over the past few years!
 
This is what it looks like when the kids find the correct matches for the beginning sounds. 
 
 Many of kids did really well with it! I even saw a few kids have some 'ah-ha' moments that just gave me chills! And that, is one of the most rewarding parts of being a teacher!
 

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