Which preschool writing example most clearly demonstrates understanding of letter-sound relationships?

• A. Raoul is playing in the grocery store center. He makes a list of items that he wants to buy at the store: SUP, MLK, BRD (soup, milk, bread).
• B. Lianna is writing Q Z T A on an index card.
• C. Denny is writing BWY on the envelope and tells the teacher it says 'Grandma.'
• D. Kate finishes making a collage and writes KATE at the bottom of the collage

Answer: (A)

Understanding how sounds map to letters is being shown when a preschooler writes to represent spoken words. In this example, the child labels items from a pretend grocery store using letter sequences that reflect the sounds heard in each word: soup becomes SUP, milk becomes MLK, bread becomes BRD. This shows invented spelling in action—using letters to stand for the sounds heard in words and creating recognizable, meaningful labels even if the spelling isn’t conventional. It demonstrates phoneme-to-grapheme mapping across different words, a clear sign of grasping letter-sound relationships.

Other writing behaviors here illustrate different skills but not the same breadth of sound-to-letter application. Writing individual letters without forming a word, or spelling a specific word like a name or a label that’s assumed to say something without demonstrating how the sounds correspond to letters, doesn’t show the same level of applying phonemic awareness to represent varied spoken words.