Sound Sort

What Sound Sort practices

Sound Sort is a listening hunt. The game names a sound and asks for every picture that starts with it, or every picture that ends with it, and the question is also written small as s _ _ or _ _ s.

Six pictures are scattered on the screen and two or three of them fit. For /p/ that could be pin, pot and pan at the start, or tap, map and top at the end. The other pictures are picked to sound close, so your child really has to listen.

Who it suits

Four- to six-year-olds who can already hear first sounds and are ready to notice last sounds as well. Older children who mix up the ends of words when they spell will get useful practice here too.

How a round goes

Every tap says that picture’s word, so your child can listen as they search. A picture that fits lights up and flies into the found tray; one that does not just wobbles and is named in text. The hunt ends when the tray is full.

Start hunts and end hunts take turns, so one ring of five rounds covers both kinds of listening in about three minutes.

A tip for home

On a walk or in the car, pick a sound and take turns naming things that end with it, like hat, cat and boat for /t/. Ending sounds are harder to hear than first sounds, so stretch the word a little and let your child hear the last sound land.

Try next

• First Sound — a simpler single-picture version if the hunt feels like a lot.
• Do you hear it? — moves the listening into the middle of the word, where vowels live.
• Same or Different? — compares two whole spoken words that differ by one sound.
• Stretchy Blend — once sounds are easy to pick out, slide through them to build a word.

More from “Listening for sounds”

• Clap the Parts — Clap the beats in a spoken word.

Read more

Behind in reading, or a late bloomer?: rough guideposts for listening and letter sounds in the early school years.