Space Beginning Sounds Matching (Printable Kindergarten Phonics Game)

This space beginning sounds game is a proper hands-on phonics activity, and it’s got a bit more to it than your average matching game.

Instead of pairing cards side by side, the letters sit stacked on the rocket’s window, so your little ones work through them one at a time – revealing each new sound as they go.

While they’re revealing the letters and matching the sounds, they’re practicing letter recognition, segmenting and strengthening their letter-sound connections!

Time to blast off!

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
• Concentration and focus – working through a stack of letters one at a time takes sustained attention. 
• Decision making and problem solving – for each letter, they need to scan the stars, say the words in their head (or out loud), work out the beginning sound and then make a match. 

If you line the windows 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 Space Phonics Game

First you need to download the rocket and stars initial sounds 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 window for every letter and a star with a picture that begins with it. 

Plus the rocket base. You’ll want to cut all these ot and probably laminate them.

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

How To Use This Beginning Sounds Game

This space sound matching game would be great as a phonics activity at school or home. 

The main way to use this is to place the rocket on the table with all the letter cards piled up on the window space. Then spread all the picture stars out around it, just as if it was blasting through space!

Then, whatever letter is showing at the top of the pile, your little ones will need to find the correct picture that begins with that sound.

They can then pair them up and remove them from the game (maybe they’ve visited that star now?).

Then, work through the pile until they’re all matched! You obviously don’t have to include all 26 letters – might be nice to just include certain sounds that you’re working on or that you know children need a little extra help with.

Get Even More Out of This Space Phonics Game

Here are some fun ways to get even more out of this kindergarten phonics center:

Mission Control Says…

Turn it into a listening game. Instead of your little learner flipping through the letter windows themselves, you hold the letters and call out the sound – “Mission Control says… find the star that begins with b!”

They have to scan the stars and grab the right one. It adds a fun role-play element and shifts the focus to listening skills and sound recognition without the visual letter prompt. You could even create some of these astronaut id badges to make it even more special.

Countdown to Launch

Add a timer or a simple countdown. Can they match the star before you count down from ten?

You’ll be amazed how much faster they start recognizing those initial sounds when there’s a rocket launch at stake.

Sound Sorting Station

You could also use them as the base of a sound sorting game. Choose a few letter windows, 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.

Stellar Storytelling

Once they’ve matched a few stars, pick three or four and challenge your little ones to make up a short story using all the pictures. The the bee found an apple in a castle… It’s a creative way to get in some storytelling skills, vocabulary building and speaking practice.

Build a CVC Rocket Word

If your little learners are ready for the next step, use the letter windows to build simple CVC words. Lay out three letters – say, c, a, t – and see if they can sound them out and blend them together. You could pair this with the flower CVC words game for even more blending practice. It’s a natural progression from beginning sounds into early reading.

Memory Match

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 a selection of windows together
• Then lay them all face down in neat rows
• Do the same with the corresponding stars next to this
• Starting with the youngest player, take turns turning a card over from each section
• If they match, you can keep them and have another go. If they don’t your turn is over and play moves to the 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.

Alphabet Astronaut

Challenge your little learner to match all 26 stars in alphabetical order. They’ll need to know their alphabet sequence to do this. Sing through the alphabet song together if they get stuck – it’s a great chance to link letter names to letter sounds in a practical way.

Outdoor Space Mission

Take the phonics game outside. Hide the picture stars around the garden or playground and keep the rocket and letter windows at “base.”

Your little learner checks the window, then has to run and find the matching star and bring it back to base. All the phonics benefits of the original game, plus a whole lot of running around. Gross motor skills, fresh air and phonics practice – what’s not to love?

However you use this space phonics game, I hope you and your little ones have a blast with it!

If they love space themed activities, there are plenty more space printables to explore – including a build a rocket craft and a build an astronaut craft.

And if you’re looking for more beginning sounds practice, you might also like the beginning sounds flowers or the beginning sounds fish game.

Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!