Phonics Game: B or H

For the last couple of weeks, I have been verbally working on phonics with Arin. I'd give her two words and ask her which one started with a certain letter. For example: I'd say, "Which word starts with the letter B: boat or car?" We'd do this with whatever words I could think of for the particular letter. Mostly, we worked on the letters B, D, H, K, L, M, Q, R, S, & T but sometimes I'd throw in a different letter.

This past week, we changed the game up. I'd give her a word and ask her what letter it started with. "What letter does the word boat start with?"

She's done really, really well with both variations of this game. So today, I thought we'd take it from being a verbal game and make it into a visual game. I looked through magazines and found ten pictures. Five of the pictures started with the letter B (boat, bed, bowl, boot, belt) and five started with the letter H (heart, hat, house, horse, hamburger). Then, I wrote the letter B at the top of one paper and the letter H at the top of a second paper. I turned all of the pictures facedown. Arin would take one of the pictures and look at it. Then we'd say what it was (ex: house) and she would tell me if it started with a B or an H. This game seemed a little more confusing to her than when we do it verbally. She did pick the right answer about 75% of the time, but that was usually only after I repeated the word several times and got her to really pay attention to me. So we will play this game again and eventually add more letters and more pictures.