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Beginning Sounds Cut & Paste Worksheets

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Get 26 pages of free Beginning Sounds Cut and Paste printables with one worksheet for every letter of the alphabet, A-Z! These no-prep worksheets allow children to practice initial sounds in engaging ways like cutting, pasting, and sorting colorful pictures.

Square graphic with beginning Sounds worksheets on a rainbow background.
Download 26 FREE worksheets at the bottom of this post!

🔤 All About Beginning Sounds

Identifying beginning sounds in words is a foundational phonological awareness skill. It’s a time children begin to understand that the words they say are made up of sounds, and those sounds are connected to print.

It builds the foundational skill of recognizing that sounds correspond to letters. Children need to learn that when they see a letter, their mouth must make that sound and their ear must hear that sound.

These will always match! Identifying initial sounds is an important first step in this orthographic mapping process.

Why focus on beginning sounds in words? Well, it’s easiest for kids to hear initial sounds in words before attempting to isolate and identify medial or final sounds.

It’s still a hard skill, but with repeated practice and lots of examples (we love to use an alphabet arc for even more practice!), kids will begin to understand. They’ll start hearing the sounds at the beginning of words and connecting them to print.

As an added bonus, these worksheets even help kids develop scissor skills with cutting and pasting requirements.

👉 For even more practice and repeated exposures, get our Alphabet Bundle of resources!

All the a-z beginning sounds cut and paste worksheets laid out with scissors and glue.

Educational Info

These worksheets get kids practicing a very important skill needed for reading success – identifying beginning sounds in words.

Whether you are working on one particular letter OR if you’re focusing on the overall skill of identifying beginning sounds in words, you’ll have a comprehensive resource that will cover it all!

These worksheets are developmentally appropriate for preschool, pre-k and kindergarten students. Learning beginning sounds is the first step toward phoneme segmentation!

Build on this knowledge, and model how the letter connects to the sound they hear at the beginning of their name: Joy – /j/.

👉 Note: If a child has a digraph or special blend at the beginning of their name, teach them that! For example, Charlie should learn Ch – /ch/ rather than the C – /c/ sound. Or Drake should learn Dr – /dr/ rather than /d/.

The completed letter B cut and paste worksheet with pictures glued in correct columns.

A-Z Words

Use these words as an answer key, to assist students as they complete the worksheets, or for other beginning sounds practice activities.

  • A Words: Apple, alligator, axe, animals, astronaut.
  • B Words: Barn, baby, bed, button, bee.
  • C Words: Camel, car, cake, cow, camera.
  • D Words: Dolphin, dog, donut, dice, deer.
  • E Words: Exit, envelope, egg, emoji.
  • F Words: Fork, foot, fox, fish, football.
  • G Words: Goat, guitar, ghost, goggles, gum.
  • H Words: Hand, heart, honey, hat, house.
  • I Words: Insects, ink, igloo, iguana.
  • J Words: Jar, jeans, juice, jet, jellyfish.
  • K Words: Koala, kite, key, king, kangaroo.
  • L Words: Lemon, ladybug, lightning, lightbulb, leaf.
  • M Words: Mouse, moon, mask, money, monkey.
  • N Words: Nurse, net, nose, nail, nest.
  • O Words: Otter, octopus, ostrich, octagon, olives.
  • P Words: Pig, pencil, popcorn, pancakes, paint.
  • Q Words: Quarter, quail, quotes, question mark, queen.
  • R Words: Rainbow, raccoon, robot, rain, ring.
  • S Words: Soccer, sun, sandcastle, scissors, saw.
  • T Words: Tape, two, tooth, turtle, turkey.
  • U Words: Under, unlock, up, umbrella, underwear.
  • V Words: Volcano, vulture, vest, van, vegetables.
  • W Words: Watermelon, waffle, window, whale, wagon.
  • X Words* (see note below): Box, fox, wax, axe, six.
  • Y Words: Yarn, yam, yak, yogurt, yo-yo.
  • Z Words: Zebra, zucchini, zig zag, zero, zipper.

*Letter X: We teach the letter X as making /k/ + /s/ sound; however the only English words that begin with x have the /gs/ sound.

As such, the words we use /k/ + /s/ as the ending sound. For the letter X worksheet only, students should be directed to listen for the /k/ +/s/ sound at the end of the word.

Tips & Info

  1. Review the pictures with your students before giving them the printables. Some pictures are obvious (b bee) while others may need an explanation (a astronaut). As an added bonus, you’re teaching kids new vocabulary this way, too!
  2. Use these worksheets for independent, group, or center work.
  3. We only included the short vowel, hard c, and hard g sounds, which should be taught before the long vowels and soft sounds.
  4. Looking for individual letter work? Check out our letter A, B, or Q worksheets!

Download & Print

Using these worksheets? We’d love to hear about your experience with them!
Leave a comment below or tag us on Instagram @literacylearn.

DOWNLOAD TERMS: All of our resources and printables are designed for personal use only in homes and classrooms. Each teacher must download his or her own copy. You may not: Save our files to a shared drive, reproduce our resources on the web, or make photocopies for anyone besides your own students. To share with others, please use the social share links provided or distribute the link to the blog post so others can download their own copies. Your support in this allows us to keep making free resources for everyone! Please see our Creative Credits page for information about the licensed clipart we use. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our terms, please email us. Thank you!

2 Comments

  1. Hi Katie, these are great! Do you have these beginning sound sheets with the focus letter as in lower case? It would be great to have them with lower case letters rather than capitals.

    1. Hi Donna,
      At this time, we don’t have them with lowercase letters. So sorry! But as we create more free products, we will definitely consider that…especially for introductory skills like beginning sounds. In the meantime, maybe you could write the lowercase letters beside the capital letters on a master copy, and then copy them for your students? That might be a good solution. Thanks again!
      Katie & Laura

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