Free Printable Fall Letter Sounds Mats for Preschool and Kinder
Practicing letter-sound recognition and isolation is a ton of fun with these printable fall letter sounds mats, perfect for literacy learning!
Fall Letter Sounds Matching Mats
Learning upper and lower case letter names and sounds is a key skill in the early grades! As students master identifying letters and sounds, they begin to move on to more challenging phonemic awareness skills, such as letter sound isolation!
Isolating sounds in words is essential in learning how to sound out, blend, and decode words. These fall letter sounds mats will help students work on this key skill in a fun, hands-on way! Students will match the correct letters to the beginning, middle, or ending sound found in the pictures on the letter mats.
These letter sounds mats are perfect for kindergarten students as well as first-grade students. They could even be used with second graders as needed. They would make a great small group or literacy center activity. You can even use them for an independent practice activity as students work on their letter sounds practice.
Prep Made Easy!
These fall letter sounds matching mats are super easy to get ready for your students! Just print, laminate, and go! Instead of laminating, you can also slide the mats into a write and wipe pocket for durability.
This resource includes 3 different beginning sound mats, 1 middle sound mat, and 1 ending sound mat. Each mat has 9 pictures, so students get a lot of great practice with each type of sound. 45 different opportunities to be exact!
It also comes with printable alphabet letter tiles that you can choose to print and use. You can also use any other alphabet letter manipulative, such as letter tiles, magnetic letters, letter beads, etc. that you have in your classroom.
These mats come in color AND black and white, so you can use them even if you don’t have access to color printing or are limited on your colored copies.
To incorporate fine motor skills, you can print black and white mats and let your students color them!
If you plan to use these word mats for small groups or literacy centers, you can save yourself some printing time and paper by prepping fewer copies!
To store these sound mats easily, put the letter tiles in a small baggie if using and store the entire activity in a large baggie, file folder, or storage tray. That makes it super easy to grab and go!
Differentiated Instruction With The Fall Letter Sounds Mats
These fall letter sounds mats can be used in many different ways depending on the instructional setting, the sound of focus, and the level of difficulty. Students can use these mats to work on initial sounds, middle sounds, ending sounds, or all 3 types of sounds.
Your students should begin working with beginning sounds letter recognition and isolation. There are 3 different mats to help them master this skill. Once they are showing signs of mastery with beginning sounds, they can move onto middle and ending sounds.
You can differentiate instruction by giving students only beginning sound, middle sound, or ending sounds mats. As they progress, they can work on all of the mats. There are 5 mats in all.
Students will be applying phonemic awarenss skills to determine the letter sounds and phonics skills to find the matching letter.
One way you can differentiate this activity for students ready for a challenge is by laying all of the mats out. Students can draw a mat and complete it OR they can draw a letter tile and find a picture that has that letter sound, either on the beginning, middle, or ending sounds mats.
This is a fun way to add a twist to the activity and make students’ brains work in a different way. Students can use this as a partner activity, working as a team to complete the mats.
An additional way you can use this activity to teach letters and sounds is to have students practice letter formation by writing the letters they use or forming them with play dough.
They could even write the word of the picture on a recording sheet and use it in a sentence. The opportunities with these fall letter mats are endless!
Setting Up The Fall Letter Sounds Activity
Supplies needed:
- Fall letter sounds picture mats
- Printable letter tiles OR another letter manipulative
- Write and wipe pockets (optional)
Instructions:
- Print the fall letter sounds picture mats.
- Laminate or slide into write and wipe pockets.
- Print, laminate, and cut out the letter tiles if using.
- Store the letter cards in a baggie if using.
- Store the entire activity in a large baggie, file folder, or tray.
Using The Fall Letter Sounds Mats
In this hands-on literacy activity, students will look at a picture on the beginning, middle, or ending sound mat. They will determine which focus sound that word makes. Then, they will cover the picture with the matching letter manipulative.
To help students further their learning, you can have them say the sound out loud. They can even say a sentence using that word.
If students are working in partners, they can take turns matching the letter sounds and tell each other their word, focus sound, and a sentence. They can work together on the same mat or work on different mats.
These fall mats can be used as a tic-tac-toe game or bingo board. Students could play in partners with different colored letter manipulatives and work to get 3 in a row for tic-tac-toe.
In a small group, students could all have different mats and the teacher could call out a letter sound. They would look to see if they have a picture on their beginning, middle, or ending sound mat that matches that sound. The first to get a bingo wins!
There are so many ways to use this activity and so many skills students get to practice with it. Incorporate this literacy activity into your fall lesson plans as students work on their reading skills!
Click the button below to get the Fall Letter Sounds Mats and work them into your lesson plans!
Check out these other fall activities!
Editable Fall Four in a Row Game
Editable Fall Word Building Mats
Digital Fall CVC Word Building Activity
Paperless Fall Composing and Decomposing Teen Numbers Activity