Sound Sort Chant

Hey friends!

It's Keri from Enchanted Kinder Garden. I've had such a slow start to the school year this year and part of that is because of a TON of changes we've had. It seems that we've got more work to do and less time to do it in. Sound familiar? Well, I was thinking about a month back about how I could easily incorporate sound sorts into our whole group and let it be FUN and meaningful all at the same time. I came up with this game.

This beginning sound activity focuses on the first sound that we hear. The chant/song that we sing reminds them of the letter and we have to look for a picture that matches that sound. We've started using DIBELS at my school again this year and any little bit of extra practice with first sound fluency will help us in the long run.

It goes like this:
Big "letter", little "letter" come on down
Let's find a picture to match your sound.

I give the kids some pictures to choose from below the chant. We started off with just one chant and found those. Then, I used two and only pictures with both of those sounds. We've now moved on to sorting two or more sounds and having pictures that don't belong below as well. It helps us keep more than just the sounds of the week current. We still discuss the sounds of the cards that are below and we all say each of the words as they are chosen.

My kids have NEVER been so engaged in sound sorting before. I've done this same EXACT game before without the chant and it's been totally different. The song/chant gives the class something to do as a student is either walking up to find a picture or pulling a picture from the chart. They turn around and show it to the entire class. We said the picture together and then let that student place it where they think it goes. If it's not under either of those, we give a thumb sideways. That's our nice way of saying that we need to check our answer.

My kids have started to ask for this during word work. I didn't plan for this to be something that they used during word work simply because it's so quick and they will finish really quickly. However, I started placing a bucket with the sound cards and pictures to match only a few sounds in a bucket. If I have students that want to play this during their word work time, they can either use the cards we've used during the week that are already in the pocket chart or they can take out other cards and sort those as well. They just get the other cards out of the bucket. Super easy.

They manage this all by themselves. It's one of those things that I didn't think much about and some way or another it turned into a huge HIT in our classroom.

If you'd like this super quick and easy sound sort to practice initial sounds with your kids, grab it for only $1.00 for the next THREE days. Be sure to pin it to remember or go ahead and add it to your cart now to remind you.