Play letter recognition games. Write out all the letters in the alphabet and point to one letter at a time. When you point to a letter, have the children make the sound of the letter. Ask the kids to say a word that starts with that letter. For instance, if you point to the letter S, kids should make the "ess" sound and give you a word like snake or spider.
Practice word blending lessons. Word blending is the process of separating the sounds of a word and having kids put the sounds back together to form the word. An example is with the word "cat." The blending exercise might start out with the sounds separated like "k" and "at." Kids sound out the individual phenomes to string them together to say the word "cat."
Use pictures to inspire sound knowledge and memorization. One idea is to show children three pictures. Two of the pictures are of images that start with one letter, such as a picture of a dog and a picture of a door. The third image is a picture of a something that starts with a different letter, such as a monkey. Ask kids which picture starts with the different sound, and let them practice identifying the different phenomes associated with the pictures.
Read storybooks out loud with children. Kids will remember their sounds by listening to you read, watching you point to each word as you sound it out and practicing repeating the words you read in the book.
Teach rhymes to children. The sounds of rhymes, such as bat, cat and hat, are effective for helping kids memorize the endings of words, such as "at."