At a Glance
This Valentine's Day trace the beginning sounds worksheet helps preschool and kindergarten children practice early phonics with a sweet seasonal twist. They listen for the initial sound of each themed picture, then trace the matching letter. The format builds segmenting, letter recognition, letter formation and phonemic awareness, making it a perfect fit for a Valentine's Day literacy center.
Are your children ready for some heart-filled phonics fun?
This Valentine’s Day Trace the Beginning Sounds Worksheet is a simple, engaging way to help your young learners build their early reading skills.
They’ll need to carefully segment each Valentine’s Day themed word, then work out which sound it starts with and trace the letter below.
Then it’s time to grab those crayons and get coloring!
What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn And Develop?
These beginning sounds worksheets are designed to help your children practice and develop their early reading skills, such as:
- Segmenting – this is the ability to breakdown and hear the different sounds (phonemes) in a word
- Letter recognition – knowing what the written form (graphemes) of the sounds look like
Through the tracing and coloring of the sheets they can also develop:
- Letter formation – understanding what the letters look like and how to write them
- Hand and finger strength – the ability to be able to apply enough pressure to make marks on the page and hold the pencil firmly
- Hand dominance – developing and strengthening the skill of one of their hands
- Crossing the mid-line – this is the ability to cross the imaginary line running down the center of your body – it means they won’t have to switch hands if they want to color on the other side of the page
- Pencil control – holding the pencil correctly to allow for a full and fluid range of movement
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.
RELATED Your little learners might also enjoy these SATPIN clip cards – great for segmenting and fine motor practice!
How To Prepare This Valentine’s Day Themed Beginning Sounds Worksheet
This one’s pretty straight forward!
First you’re going to want to download and print the Valentine’s Day phonics worksheets by clicking on the download box at the bottom of the page.
Join Nurtured Neurons today and discover why thousands of teachers and parents are already part of our community. Sign up now and start downloading instantly – your future self (and your little learners!) will thank you.
After that you’re all done!
That’s it, your little ones are now ready to practice their segmenting skills and start identifying those initial sounds.
Simply encourage them to segment (breakdown the word into its phonemes – it might help to use fingers for each sound they can hear) and listen carefully for that first sound. Then they need to trace the initial letters as neatly as they can. When they’re done, they get to color in all those cute pictures!
A Couple More ideas Ways to Use This Valentine’s Day Printable
To give you even more mileage, here are some extra ideas:
Phonics Memory Game: Print two copies, cut the images and letters into cards, and use them as a matching or memory game. When the children turn over a pair, they have to trace both the letters.
Centre Rotation: Use it in small groups while other children complete our Valentine’s Day Scavenger Hunt – supports phonics and active learning together.
Sound Hunt Extension: After matching, have children go on a mini-sound hunt around the classroom/home to find objects that start with the same letters.
Letter Matching: Cut out the pictures into cards and use the letters from this Heart Letter Matching Game. Your little ones have to match the pictures with the correct letter – then they get to trace and color in!
I hope your little learners love using this Valentine’s tracing worksheet and get lots of practice with those early phonics skills.
Remember these loads more Valentine’s themed activities to check out here.
Enjoy!
