Tutorial Tuesday: Teaching Letter Sounds

Hi! My name is Tammy from 123 Teach With Me. 

I'm so glad Lori invited me to be here!! I'm a teacher of 10 years and love sharing and inspiring other teachers. I think it's so important to build a strong connection between school and home. That's the main reason why I started my blog....to share my ideas with teachers AND parents. A child's success is not possible with only the teacher or only the parent. It's takes both to build a successful student.

Today I'm going to share with you a fun way I teach my own kids beginning letter sounds and practice with finding sounds in words. 

I came up with this when my son started to learn his letter sounds and he loved it!! We played this in the car, outside, and while we were shopping in stores. When I knew we were going play the game, I would give my son a magnifying glass and tell him we were going on a "hunt". It might be a good idea to keep a hand lens in your purse or bag so if they ask to go "hunting" you will be ready. He always loved to have his own lens to carry along while he was "hunting" because he thought it was funny the way things looked.

The song with this game goes to the tune of "A Hunting We Will Go" Here it is....

A hunting we will go

A hunting we will go

"B" is the sound we're listening for

A hunting we will go

**When they find something that begins with that sound sing...

Bat begins with "B" (make the sound)

Bat begins with "B"

Bat begins with "B B" (make the sound twice)

A hunting we will go.

When we returned home or finished the game, I would get this sheet out (pic below) where we would talk about what we saw that day and I would write down the words. Again, a sheet protector is great so you can easily erase the letter with a tissue and start with a new letter the next day.

This is a quick activity that your children or students will love!! You can also alter this for whatever sounds you are finding in words; ending sounds, blends, digraphs, long vowels, short vowels or just simply finding the actual letter....any specific phonetic skill will work! All children love a little song and I know they will really enjoy this!

Thanks for reading!