Match the Letters with Pictures – Free Printables
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Get these Match the Letters with Pictures multisensory printables! Young learners in preschool and Kindergarten will get multisensory alphabet practice by matching uppercase and lowercase letters with colorful beginning sound pictures to build a solid foundation of alphabet knowledge, an early predictor of reading success.
💘 Why We Love It
Children will use this resource to match uppercase and lowercase letters with beginning sound pictures. We love it for so many reasons!
➡️ Multimodal Practice: We love activities that engage the senses because this is how learning sticks! Kids will use their eyes, ears, and hands as they say the letter and sound, finger trace the letters, and move the puzzle pieces together.
➡️ Connects Phonemes to Graphemes: This activity allows kids to match the sound (represented by the picture) to its written form using both capital and lowercase letters. Louisa Moats (2004), in her book Speech-to-Print, states that “phoneme-grapheme relationships are the foundational building blocks of the orthographic code.”
➡️ Links Phonological Awareness and Phonics: Phonological awareness is all about the sounds, while phonics is all about the letters. We love this activity because it bridges the two together!
➡️ Engaging & Colorful: In my experience, kids just LOVE puzzles. It also helps them build their fine-motor skills which will help with pencil control and scissor skills. The puzzles are fun to put together, with bright, easy-to-recognize images for every letter.
➡️ Scaffolding: We recommend giving students a few letters at a time to practice, or if they’re ready, they can put together the entire alphabet!
➡️ Research-backed: Multiple studies have shown that letter name knowledge is among the best predictors of children’s early literacy skills (Scarborough, 1998; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). This solid foundation has been shown to lead to higher reading ability, including decoding and comprehension (Denton, West, & Walston, 2003; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001). And that’s what reading is all about!
“Make certain that the child is secure in his knowledge of the letters of the alphabet. The alphabet is the cornerstone for all reading and spelling”
–IDA Dyslexia Handbook (2019)
🔤 About the Activity
These multi-sensory letter matching with picture worksheets are designed to help students recognize letters and match them to the beginning sounds of words. The activity should be used only AFTER explicit teaching of the letters and sounds have been taught.
The vowels are red and represent the short vowel sounds. The consonants are black. This helps kids differentiate between the two classes of sounds at an early age.
- Aa: Apple
- Bb: Bat
- Cc: Cat
- Dd: Dog
- Ee: Egg
- Ff: Fish
- Gg: Gum
- Hh: Hat
- Ii: Igloo
- Jj: Jam
- Kk: Kite
- Ll: Leaf
- Mm: Mouse
- Nn: Nest
- Oo: Octopus
- Pp: Pig
- Qu qu: Queen*
- Rr: Ring
- Ss: Sun
- Tt: Tooth
- Uu: Umbrella
- Vv: Volcano
- Ww: Watermelon
- Xx: Fox*
- Yy: Yo-Yo
- Zz: Zebra
👉 The letters, keywords, and images match our free ABC Chart and Short Vowel Anchor Chart for classrooms and our free Phonetic Flashcards. This is a great opportunity for multiple, multi-sensory exposures using the same keywords!
ℹ️ Expert Tips & Info
- The letter x makes the /k/ + /s/ sounds, which is not found at the beginning of words in English. That’s why we teach the words fox, box, mix, and six to teach this phoneme.
- When teaching q, the letters q and u should always shown together!
- When first introducing the letter sounds and written graphemes, be sure to use a sound wall Then, when kids are completing this activity, they can reference the sound wall as a scaffold.
- The puzzles are perfect to use with pre-k, kinder, EL, or any other students working on alphabet knowledge.
- These work great for centers or independent work. Kids stay engaged and focused at the task at hand.
- Teachers love it because checking for understanding is easy! Simply look over it! You can easily use the results as a formative assessment tool.
💯 Want to read more about teaching letters and sounds? Get our 30 Best Tips for Teaching Letters and Sounds post, with links to tons of freebies.
And then visit our TPT to grab more alphabet resources like our alphabet arcs and alphabet folder.
📖 What the Research Says
To read and learn more about what research says about the importance of alphabet knowledge and best practices for teaching young learners, we recommend these expert articles:
- Denton, K., West, J., & Walston, J. (2003). Reading—Young children’s achievement and classroom experiences: Findings from the condition of education, 2003. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics
- National Early Literacy Panel. (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the national early literacy panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.
- Scarborough, H. S. (1998). Early identification of children at risk for reading disabilities. In B. K. Shapiro, P. J. Accardo, & A. J. Capute (Eds.), Specific reading disability: A view of the spectrum (pp. 75-120). Timonium, MD: York Press.
- Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (2001). Emergent literacy: Development from prereaders to readers. In S. B. Neuman, & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 11-29). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
- Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69, 848-872. doi:10.2307/1132208
Related Resources
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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!
👉 More Alphabet Freebies: B/D Reversal Chart, Alphabet Arcs.
I love it! I am using this for my incoming first graders. I like that it can be used in progression. I am going to have the students match uppercase and lowercase letters. Then move to adding the pictures to the letters as the next step. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Regina,
Thank you for your positive feedback. We love creating products that can be scaffolded for impactful learning. We’re so happy you can use this activity to reinforce alphabetic knowledge with your new students.
Katie and Laura
I love these because the students need to really match them, as they can fit together incorrectly. GREAT way to set it up!! Otherwise they can just match them by the piece shape, and not need to pay attention to the letter and initial sound picture. Love it!
Hi Treva,
Thanks for the kind feedback! We try to intentionally plan the way we develop activities to maximize student learning, and we always try it out with kids first before we make it a sharable resource. So glad you are enjoying it!
Katie and Laura