State and Model the Objective
Tell the children that they will go for the gold stars while listening for words that begin with the hard g (/g/) sound, such as go, gift, gold, glitter, and gather.
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Literacy Activities
Grab the gold stars

• Tape the stars on a wall at one end of the room, wrap the boxes (without their lids on) with gold paper if needed, and place the boxes at the opposite end of the room from the stars.
• Separate the children into two teams and have each team line up next to a gold gift box. 
• Have a child from each team run and grab a gold glitter star from the wall, then run back, and place the gold star in his or her team’s gold gift box. 
• Then have the next person on each team run and repeat the process until all the gold stars have been gathered.
• Encourage the children to say, “Go for the Gold!’” every time a new person runs to grab a gold star. 
• When all the gold glitter stars are gone, count how many are in each gold gift box and declare the team that has the most gold glitter stars the winners!
• Review with the children all of the hard g (/g/) words they can think of from the activity (i.e., gold, glitter, gift, go, gather, grab, gone), and have them emphasize the hard g sound by saying, “/g/ /g/ /g/” before each word.

More Practice
Identify the target sound

• Give a star to each child. 
• Say words with the hard g and non-hard g sounds (e.g., gold, glitter, cat, go, fish) out loud and have the children raise their stars in the air when they hear a word beginning with a hard g.