Learning and Sorting Letter Sounds with Ice Cream

A couple of weeks ago, we shared a Short and Long Vowel sorting activity with ice cream and my daughters {ages 3 and 5} were a bit jealous. So this past week, I adapted it into an activity for learning and sorting letter sounds with ice cream! FUN!

*This post contains affiliate links.

Before using these, I printed them onto cardstock and cut them out. I did not laminate them, but if you choose to, I highly recommend this laminator. I cut around each individual ice cream scoop, but they are designed so that you can cut around them in a more low-prep way if you desire.

 

Learning Letter Sounds

While NSis {3 years old} has been working and re-working the activities from Learning the Alphabet, she doesn’t know all her letter sounds. So, I thought it would be simple enough to just take on letter and work on it with her. We did the letter d together {primarily because it’s an easy letter to pronounce}.

Before stacking the pictures, I showed her each letter d picture on the ice cream scoops and said them like this “/d/-/d/-dog.” I made the letter d‘s sound a couple of times before saying the word to emphasize d‘s sound. I asked her to repeat after me for each picture. After we did that I placed the Dd cone down on our work space and she put the d pictures atop the cone, identifying each picture again.

 

Once they were all stacked, we went through each image one more time and identified them. I know this sounds very repetitive, but repetitive activities are great for young kids. I highly recommend monitoring their interest level to know when it’s time to stop. NSis and I probably did this 3 times in a row before on her “command”, so she was highly interested. We even moved on and did several others before she lost interest.

 

 

Sorting Letter Sounds

MBug {age 5} knows most of her letter sounds, although there are a few that trip her up. We’ve been trying to finish up Reading the Alphabet this summer {not sure if we’ll accomplish it}, but she’s loved every minute of it. Seriously. This girl loves her some “schoolwork.”

I printed off a few of the tricky sounds, such as w and y and we sorted those together. First, we identified the pictures, then I placed both cones down and she identified and sorted each picture on top of the correct cones. We did this sort a couple of times, as there were a few that she wanted to mix up.

The beauty of this printable pack is that you can ask kids to sort by any beginning letter sounds that your child needs to work on. Just print them off, cut them out, and sort them. If you’re unsure which letter sounds work best to compare with one another, please read my Tips for Teaching Letters and Letter Sounds post. You’ll find loads of helpful hints there!

 

More Ideas You May Enjoy:

• Ice Cream Alphabet Matching – with upper and lower case matching and one image for each letter {Free Homeschool Deals}
• Short and Long Vowel Ice Cream Cones
• Reading the Alphabet – each letter lesson comes with letter sound cards that kids can use to sort by beginning letter sound
• Alphabet Playdough Mats

• Alphabet Sounds Learning App is PACKED with letter learning and not just for beginning sounds! Four levels of interactive play are included. Available on iTunes or Google Play for $2.99.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy Teaching!
~Becky