Puppy Beginning Sounds Matching (Printable Phonics Game for Kindergarten)

Are you ready to let the dogs out for some phonics fun? If your little learners are starting to explore the alphabet, this puppy beginning sounds matching game is a playful way to practice connecting letters to the sounds they make. Will they be able to correctly get all the little pups home?

This phonics matching game is great for helping your little ones to recognize what the different letters look like and start listening for the beginning sounds in words.

This pack contains pairs of puppies  and dog houses for every letter of the alphabet. I’ve made them all lower case as these are the main letters they will come across when learning to read.

You can check out some other cute animal themed activities here! 

And if you haven’t checked it out yet, there’s also our awesome phonics word card maker.  It’s a tool I’m very proud of that can automatically add sound buttons to words. These can be a great resource when helping teach your little ones to read!

What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn And Develop?

This beginning sounds game is designed to help your children practice and develop their early reading skills, such as:

• Segmenting – this is the ability to break the word into its different sounds
• Letter recognition – knowing what the written form (letters) of the sounds look like
• Fine motor skills – as they pick up and move the cards
• Vocabulary Building – Naming the different pictures on the dog houses offers a great chance to discuss new words and what they mean.

If you line the puppies up to spell some simple CVC words – e.g cat, your children can also have a go at:

• Sounding out – this is saying the different sounds that the written letters make, one sound at a time.
• Blending – the ability to put the different sounds of a word together to be able to correctly say the word.

These are important skills taught during phonics lessons and help your children take some of their first steps on the path to becoming fluent readers.

How To Prepare This Puppy Themed Phonics Game

First you need to download the initial sound matching cards by clicking on the download box at the bottom of the page.

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After that, you’ll need to carefully cut them out (or roughly if you’re that kind of person…).

There’s a pair of cards for every letter included.

* A special note about x. x is a strange letter in terms of beginning sounds. Although there are a few words that begin with x (x-ray, xylophone etc), they don’t use what we’d typically teach as the ‘x sound’ to children who are beginning to learn phonics (it’s kind of like a ‘k’ followed quickly by a ‘s’ – as in fox).

So I’ve included a picture of a box to be matched with x as this is a better representation of the x sound children are often taught early on. If you think this may be a little confusing (as this is a beginning sounds game) – I’ve also included an x-ray. So you can choose which one you’d rather use – or leave it out altogether. *

I’ve made the cards as square cards for easier cutting – but you could always cut around the actual puppies and kennels if you want to make them a little fancier.

Then I’d advise laminating them to keep them nice so you can reuse them.

That’s it, your little ones are now ready to start learning their beginning letter sounds.

How To Use This Beginning Sounds Game

This pet themed phonics matching game would be great as an activity at school or home. Here’s a few ways you can use it (I’m sure you’d be able to think up some more as well).

Sound Matching Game

One activity you could do is to lay some of the dog houses on the floor. If your children are learning set 1 then you could put down the penguin, apple, star and tiger. Then give them the ‘s’ letter card and see if they can pick out the right picture to match the sound.

You could also put down all the cards and see if they can move them all into the correct matching pairs.

Blending Activity

You could lay the cards with the letters out to spell easy CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words like cat or dog and see if they can sound out and blend them correctly to read the word.

Check out this post about phonics lessons at home for some tips.

Sound Sorting Game

You could also use them as the base of a sound sorting game. Choose a few letter cards, let’s say A, S and T and put those on the floor. Then get a range of objects that begin with those sounds (sock, apple, toothbrush etc.) and see if your little ones can place the correct objects under the correct cards.

You could always time this as they get better and mix up the cards and objects as they learn new sounds.

Memory Game

You could challenge your little learners even further by playing a memory game with them.

I’m sure you know how to play this game (sometimes called pairs), but in case you don’t it’s pretty easy:

• First, shuffle all the cards together (you might want to just do a set or two to start with)
• Then lay them all face down in neat rows
• Starting with the youngest player, take turns turning two cards over
• If they match, you can keep them and have another go. If they don’t your turn is over and play moves to the next player.
• Play continues in this fashion until the last pair is collected
• Count up all cards (a good chance to get a bit of counting practice in) and whoever has the most wins!

This game is great for developing memory and concentration skills.

Fetch the Letter

Hide the dog house cards around the room or out in your outdoor space /  yard. Give your little learner a puppy card and ask them to “go fetch” the house that starts with the matching sound. This adds a great gross motor element to their phonics practice!

Sensory Bin Dig

Bury the puppy cards in a shallow tray filled with dry rice, beans, or sand. Have your little ones dig through the bin to rescue a puppy, then figure out which dog house it belongs to.

However you use this puppy matching game, I hope you and your little ones like it! Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!