Autumn Leaf Phonics Matching Pairs
This is a great phonics activity tor preschoolers and older children who are either just learning to recognise a few sounds or those who have already learnt lots. Autumn leaves are a great free, environmentally friendly resource and they are perfect for hiding objects under!
Set Up
So for this I used my tuff tray as it is nice and large and easily contains all the leaves within. Any large tray would work. I collected lots of leaves from the garden on a dry day making sure to not get any that were too dirty. The leaves went onto the tray and then I added some sound cards of the sounds, my eldest M had been learning. I use a mixture of those that she knew really well and those that were newer. I then added a random assortment of objects from around the house. If your child has only learnt a few sounds try and use objects that only begin with those sounds.
When they saw the phonics activity both of my two were extremely intrigued as to what it was. They both started by simply walking around the outside of the tuff tray. F, my youngest, then began grabbing the objects naming them as she went. When she said “banana” I would emphasise the sound at the beginning of the word “B, b, banana.” M without prompting attempted to sort the sounds and objects into matching pairs.
When M came across, in this phonics activity, some of the sounds that she had learnt more recently for example “ee” she pointed out that she couldn’t find any objects that started with “ee”. I then suggested that their might be objects that had the sound within their names. Could she find any that had the sound within them? She them started using the sound cards to attempt to write the whole the words. During this phonics activity both my toddler and my 4 year old were focused throughout. Although they are at completely different stages in their phonics learning they could both participate with this activity. This activity would also work well with shredded paper or different fabrics to hide the objects and sound cards.