I’m not sure what other schools do, but at our local kindergarten, the kids are taught this really cute song to help them learn the letter sounds. The song is sung to the tune of the ABC’s, except instead of just singing the alphabet, they sing, “A-ah-apple, B-buh-bear, C-cuh-cat, D-duh-duck…” While for the most part the kids are good at remembering the song, some of them are not able to jump to any letter of the alphabet to figure out the sound quickly. For example, if you asked a child what R says, he might need to sing the entire song in order to get to R-ruh-raccoon. I made this lift-a-flap so that the kids could practice remembering which word was associated with each letter independent of the song, in order to help them quickly recall the sound. Obviously, this isn’t complete when a letter makes two sounds, like C or G or the vowels, but it’s a good start.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten
Time Required: ~30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy to Moderate (using the x-acto knife to cut open the flaps is a little bit of a pain and it took me a couple tries to get my sheets lined up correctly when I glued them together. Luckily, if you’re fast, they pry apart pretty easily)
Cost: Practically free if you have a couple sheets of card stuck and the reusable supplies necessary.

Materials:

• 2 sheets card stock (or other printable thick paper).
• Letter Sounds Lift-a-Flap document

Supplies & Tools:

• printer
• x-acto knife
• ruler
• glue
• self-healing mat

Instructions:

1. Print out the Letter Sounds Lift-a-Flap document onto card stock
2. Use the x-acto knife on the self healing cutting mat to cut open the flaps. Using a ruler as a guide will help to make the lines straight.
3. Open all the flaps, then carefully glue the top sheet to the bottom sheet.
4. [Optional] If you want the paper to lay flat and the doors to stay closed, stick the final glued together page under a heavy book for awhile.

There are a number of ways you can use this sheet, but the way I most often use it nowadays is if the child doesn’t know which letter makes a sound, I remind him what word stood for the sound in his school song, then he looks for it underneath the flaps until he figures out the letter. That way he can solve the problem mostly on his own. For example, if he doesn’t know which letter the word “hand” starts with when we’re playing one of our games, I’ll say, “Huh-huh-hand” starts with the same letter as, “Huh-huh-horse”. Then he’ll look through the lift-a-flaps and remember pretty quickly (usually) that H is for horse.

In case my pictures are not super obvious, this is what each letter is supposed to be:

A – apple
B – bear
C – cat
D – duck
E – elephant
F – fish
G – goose
H – horse
I – iguana
J – jump rope
K – kangaroo
L – lion
M – mouse
N – noodle
O – octopus
P – pig
Q – queen
R – rooster
S – seal
T – tiger
U – umbrella
V – volcano
W – worm
X – x-ray
Y – yo-yo
Z – zebra

Related Links

Best Books for Kindergarten
Reading and Writing Activities
Pre-K Learning Activities

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