Create a picture matching game that students can take home to fine-tune their understanding of letter-sound recognition. Write letters on one set of index cards and draw pictures of images that begin with each letter on another set of index cards. While at home, children can place all of the cards upside down and flip them over, trying to match pictures with the letters that they begin with. Alternatively, you could ask parents to help their children play this matching game by having them hold up a letter card and asking their children to find the picture that begins with the letter on the card.
Have your students find objects in their home that contain specific letters. Create a list of letters and instruct students to look around their homes for objects that have the letters at the beginning, middle or end. For example, if the list contains the letter "T," children may find a cat or a television. Ask them to write down the names of the items that they find on their lists and have them share their lists with the class.
This homework assignment requires children to create lists of new words by changing the onset, or initial consonant sounds on rimes, or the part of the word that contains the vowel and the consonants after it. Assign students a rime, such as "at," "og" or "it" and instruct them to create lists of as many words as they can think of that contain the rime they've been assigned. For example, for the rime "at," children may create lists that contain the words, "cat," "hat," "mat," "rat" and "sat." Upon returning to class, ask children to share the lists they've created and add the words to a classroom chart so that students may refer to them while reading or writing.
Encourage students to create works of letter art. Assign children with a specific letter and instruct them to create artwork at home that focuses on the sound the given letter makes. For example, if children are assigned the letter "C," they may make collage that contains pictures of cats.