Brown Bear Beginning Letter Sounds Game

This month’s Virtual Book Club for Kids is featuring Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. Kids will love our Brown Bear Beginning Letter Sounds Game. It’s a fun way to practice letter recognition and letter sounds with a favorite book. Affiliate links are included in this post. Clicking on the book titles or covers will take you to Amazon.

Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? makes the list of our favorite books for babies. It was one of my daughter’s favorites as a baby and she still loves it as a toddler. The repetition and predictability make it a great first book. We love to add in the animal sounds as we read, too.

I’ve been working on letters with Lily (age 2). She recognizes many of them (inconsistently) and knows some of their sounds. Using animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? allowed me to focus on some of the letters and reinforce their names and sounds.

I gathered some animals that were found in the story – a bear, a bird, a frog, a duck, a horse, a cat, a dog, a sheep, and a fish. I placed letter magnets that matched the beginning letter of each animal onto a small magnet board. If you choose to use magnets, be sure to supervise the activity at all times. Magnets can be dangerous if swallowed. Instead of magnets you can use larger letter toys, puzzle pieces, or make your own foam letters like we did in our water race to learn letters and numbers.

I asked Lily to choose an animal. She chose the duck first.

What letter does the duck start with? I emphasized the beginning letter sounds. Duck starts with d. Can you find the d? She found the letter d. I chose to use lowercase letters because we need more practice with these.

Next, Lily chose a frog. I repeated the questions. Frog starts with the letter f. Where is the f? She found the f and placed it next to the frog.

We continued playing the game this way talking about the letters and their sounds as we went.

Extensions for older kids:

Work on beginning letter sounds by starting with a letter magnet. Find an animal that matches.
Spell the names of the animals with the magnets.
Write down the animal names or just the beginning letters.

For 20 more ways to learn letters, check out my collaborative ebook ABCs and 123s.

More Ideas from the Virtual Book Club for Kids

See more activities inspired by Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?:

Brown Bear Brown Bear Printable Language Activity from Growing Book by Book
Counting Bears Number Strips from Mom Inspired Life
Brown Bear Slime Preschool Science from Preschool Powol Packets

Also stop by the Virtual Book Club for Kids Facebook page to see what others are sharing!

See our entire Virtual Book Club for Kids book list here.

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