10 Fun Ways to Learn Letter Sounds with Alphabet Picture Clues

Learning the letter sounds is an important step in becoming a confident reader. These fun and simple games will make this necessary alphabet practice enjoyable for everyone.

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How to Teach Letter Sounds

Kids need repetition with variety in order to learn, understand, and remember new information. This is true for learning letter sounds. Introduce the letter and what sound(s) it makes. Then reinforce that teaching in various ways. Playing games with pictures that all start with the same letter really helps kids through repetition. Choosing multiple games to play over a span of time adds great variety to the learning.

All of these activities can be done with just you and your child at home or with a small group of kids in a preschool or playgroup setting. If you want more information on home preschool, start here. These activities can be used to teach a Letter of the Day or as a fun educational activity for your family to enjoy together. Several of the games are also fun for older kids who already know the letter sounds.

Although many of these games can be played by splitting into teams and keeping score, kids enjoy all of them, even without competition. I am all about some friendly competition and helping kids understand that you win some and you lose some. However, we can also teach our kids that we are not competing against each other in everything in life.

The foundation of reading readiness and confidence is talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing with your Littles. These ten games incorporate those important activities.

What are Alphabet Picture Clues?

Alphabet Picture Clues are simply cards with a simple picture on each one. Each of the pictures in a set begin with the same letter. You can use the free printable to click and print these cards for the letter A. Print them on cardstock or laminate for more durability. Cover the cards with packing tape as a budget-friendly alternative to full lamination.

Click HERE to PRINT Letter A Alphabet Picture Clues (Free)

Now, on to the fun stuff!

10 Fun Ways to Learn Letter Sounds using Alphabet Picture Clues.

1. Charades

Take turns picking a picture from the stack and acting it out without sounds for others to guess. While it’s common to make teams and keep score for charades, kids love this activity even without competition.

2. Sound Box

Get a box, basket, or other container and label it with the letter of the day. Lay out picture clues for several different letters. Have your child choose the pictures that begin with the letter of the day and put them in the box. Alternately, you can do the same activity using objects gathered from around the house rather than the pictures.

Great books to go along with this activity are My Sound Box Books by Jane Belk Moncure. These are very commonly found at libraries.

3. Memory & Advanced Memory

Memory: Print two copies of your Alphabet Picture Clues. Mix up the pictures and place them face down. Take turns flipping over two cards at a time, looking for matches.

Advanced Memory: Choose several pairs of pictures that begin with the same letter. For example, use apple and ant, ball and button, cat and car, duck and door, and egg and elephant. Mix the cards and place them face down. Take turns flipping over two cards at a time and looking for pairs of pictures that begin with the same letter.

4. Thumbs Up

Mix cards together from several different letters, with the most cards coming from the letter of focus. As you hold up different pictures, have kids put their thumbs up if the picture begins with the letter of the day or their thumbs down if the picture begins with a different letter.

5. Word Clues

Take turns picking a picture from the stack and explaining the picture without saying what it is. Others try to guess what the picture is.

6. Hide and Seek

Hide the Alphabet Picture Clues around the room for your child(ren) to find. To make it more difficult, you can hide pictures from several letters, and the goal is to collect pictures beginning with only one specific letter.

7. Sound Sort

Mix cards together from four or five different letters. Have your child sort all the pictures by their starting letter (all the a’s together, b’s together, etc.).

8. Drawing Clues

Take turns picking a card from a bowl and drawing it for others to guess. Kids love writing and drawing with erasable markers especially. Use a whiteboard or put paper inside a page protector for writing with dry erase markers. Drawing is great practice for writing skills too. You can also practice writing the word afterward. These are my favorite Dry Erase Markers that last a long time.

9. Sing It

Take turns picking an Alphabet Picture Clue and then sing a song about the picture. For example, if you pick a picture of a duck, you can sing old MacDonald Had a Farm with a duck verse. If you can’t think of a song to go with the picture, you can make up a silly ditty or change the words to a popular song to fit. For example, If you pick a picture of an ant, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star can become “Creeping, creeping little ant, do you like to eat eggplant? When you crawl across the floor, I hope you make it out the door. Creeping, creeping little ant, do you like to eat eggplant?”

Don’t worry about rhyming or even making sense. This is a chance to just be silly.

10. Story Time

Choose three Alphabet Picture Clues from a hat. Make-up and tell a story that includes all three pictures. You can take turns drawing three and telling your own mini stories, or create the story together by taking turns telling a sentence or two of the story at a time.

I hope these 10 games help you enjoy the time you get to spend teaching your Littles letter sounds!

Can you think of any other ways to use Alphabet Picture Clues? Please share with us in the comments! I’m always looking for new ways to use them with my own kiddos!

Print your Letter A Alphabet Letter Clues now or Pin it for later!

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