I may earn money from companies mentioned in this post at no cost to you. Thank you!
This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Looking for monster themed phonics activities for Halloween? With these beginning letter sound match clip cards, students will need to decide if the 2 monsters are showing objects with the same beginning sound.
Halloween doesn’t just have to be about pumpkins, ghosts and witches; it’s a great time to bring some monster fun into your classroom. Monsters make for a great theme as they can take any size, shape or color, which means you can have a lot of fun creating and describing different monsters. You can also engage your students with monster themed phonics activities, and this cute initial sounds monster printable will help your students develop and master the skill of picking out the beginning sound of a word.
Why The Beginning Sound Matters
These beginning sound clip cards will quickly become an essential tool in your early literacy toolbox. The beginning sound of a word is a key skill for students to master as it’s the first step in truly understanding that words are made up of different phonemes which will help them as they learn to read beyond just the memorization of their sight words. In particular, these clip cards show some objects with the same beginning sound and some that have different starting letters and they teach students to differentiate between the two.
Preparing Monster Beginning Letter Sound Match
If you don’t have the materials needed, don’t sweat! You can get it delivered to your doorstep really quickly with Amazon Prime. You can get a 30-day free trial here.
These monster themed phonics activities are easy to get ready: just download, print either 2 or 4 to a page (to save on ink and paper) and you’re ready for some monster fun. If you’re planning on cutting up the cards, you may want to laminate them so that they don’t get ripped or damaged as students play the games.
Extension Monster Themed Phonics Activities
These beginning letter sound match clip cards are easy for students to use. They look at both the pictures being held by the monsters and say the name of the object out loud. If there’s a match, they mark the check, and mark the x if the words don’t start with the same sound. As students begin to master this with greater accuracy and speed, try some of these extension activities:
-
Make it right – once students have completed all the cards, have them split the set into two piles: one with objects with the same beginning sound, and the other where they don’t . For the pile of non-matches, challenge students to come up with a word (or as many words as they can) that generates a beginning letter sound match.
-
Group the monsters – another way to help students master their beginning sounds is to make a separate set of the monster themed beginning sound clip cards and cut each monster out individually. Students can then create groups of cards that show objects with the same beginning sound. You can give them all of the cards for a longer group project or challenge them to find just the cards that begin with whichever letter you’re workin on that week.
-
Turn it into a game – all kindergarteners love to play games, and this initial sounds monster printable makes for a great game of Snap or Memory. You’ll need to cut the cards up as with the prior activity, and then have students find matching pairs. Partner work also allows students to develop the essential skills of turn taking and accepting failure and defeat.
More Themed Centers Perfect for Halloween:
My Halloween Themed Centers is a variety pack of 10 games focused on early literacy, math, and fine motor skills.
These are the games included:
1) Witch Sight Word Spells – 40 pre-primer word cards provided with themed letter cards to form the sight words
2) Werewolf Spin and Cover Letters – alphabet divided into 5 different playing mats
3) Spider Web Sight Word Match – match the spider to its web to work on recognition of the pre-primer sight words
4) Trick or Treat Tracing – develop pre-writing fine motor skills with 15 different tracing patterns
5) Graveyard Alphabet Match – pair up the letter ghosts with their tombstones
6) Frankenstein Ten Frame Matching – big version and file folder version included
7) Candy Counting Mats to 10 – trick or treat themed counting mats that you can use with playdough or any counting manipulative
8) Count and Write to 10 – flashcards that can be used for counting the objects and then learning to write the number words
9) Measurement Cards – grab a ruler and record the lengths of 12 different creatures on the answer sheet provided
10) Halloween Treats Emotions Sorting Mats – 6 different sets of treats with 6 different emotions included
Check it out in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Fun Books for Halloween:
Other Halloween Printables You’ll Love:
1) Halloween Worksheet Pack – Lots of Halloween treats await your students in this fun-filled activity packet. 50 pages of literacy, math and fine motor practice inside!
2) Halloween Shadow Matching – Preschoolers need visual discrimination and matching skills in order to differentiate between the letters and numbers and to be able to classify objects. This Halloween shadow matching game develops these early literacy and math skills.
3) Werewolf Spin and Cover Letters – Learning to recognize letters is made fun and easy with this spin and cover game. Kids will be howling like a werewolf with excitement as they race to find all the letters on their mat.
4) Halloween Themed Centers –10 fun Halloween-themed literacy and math centers for preschool and kindergarten. No tricks, only treats, in this pack!
Get The Tools You Need For This Center Here:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips - Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages - Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey's Alphabet Pie - This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats - Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters - Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover - Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game - Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging - Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets - Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet - 1 printable, many ways to use.
