Sound Sorting: Beginning Sounds

Price: Free!
Grade Recommendation: PreK - 2nd
Subject: Reading
Specific Skill: Phonics
Levels: 1
Players: 1
For iPad, iPod, or Both: Both

This app is developed by Lakeshore Learning - one of my favorite education stores. It's quite simple, yet effective. Students sort pictures of objects according to their beginning sounds.

Here are the objectives it's designed to meet:
- Building phonemic awareness
- Identifying words by beginning sounds
- Matching words by sound

Students can either choose 3 beginning sounds or have the mobile device randomly choose 3 sounds for them. Nine balls with pictures appear on the side. Students must drag each ball under the picture that has that same beginning sound.

I appreciate how the app verbally states both the names of the pictures on the balls and the names of the pictures atop each column.

Incorrect placements cause the picture balls to return to the area where the remaining balls are, giving students another chance to correctly place it.

It would be nice if this app also addressed middle and/or ending sounds. However, that's not its purpose. Despite this, it's still worth retrieving from the App Store.