Working on beginning letter sounds with "The Great Phonics Hunt"

Today I decided to get out the bean tub we used a while back. Originally this tub was for "The Great Bean Hunt" and the girls were to hunt through a tub of navy beans for 12 kidney beans. They were then to count them into the enclosed egg carton. I removed the smaller egg carton, added more beans, and added an 18 count egg carton into which I had placed 6 letters/sounds.  Then I hid 12 small items, 2 for each beginning sound.

The girls worked together, taking turns to find an object, say what it was and find the letter it started with.

Then they played with them for a while. After mommy thought they had played enough, I had them hide the objects again and they each had their own time to find all of the objects. 

Then they hid them for mommy and I tried to find them all with my eyes closed. Not the easiest task. As I had my eyes closed the girls still had to be the ones to match the object to the correct letter. They both did really well. I told them next time there would be different objects/sounds.

Then I took six objects, each beginning with a different sound, and put them on the lid of the tub (i.e. make shift tray). I had the girls close their eyes and I took away one of the objects. They had no problem telling me which one was missing. I think next time I will take away two at a time. We used to do this with our picture cards for letter of the week.