Recasts; updates prices, adds quotes, changes byline, changes dateline from previous BEIJING/HAMBURG

By Julie Ingwersen

CHICAGO, June 8 (Reuters) - U.S. corn and wheat futures turned higher on Monday, rebounding from multi-month lows as market players covered short positions and hunted for bargains ahead of a monthly crop supply-and-demand report due later this week from the Department of Agriculture, analysts said.

But soybean futures extended a multi-day slide, pressured by favorable U.S. crop weather.

As of 1:09 p.m. CDT (1809 GMT), Chicago Board of Trade July corn CN26 was up 1-3/4 cents at $4.19-1/4 per bushel, rallying after hitting a life-of-contract low at $4.12-1/2.

CBOT July wheat WN26 was up 4 cents at $5.84 a bushel and on track to snap a six-session skid, after finding chart-based support around its 200-day moving average near $5.76.

Traders appeared to be squaring positions ahead of the USDA's June supply-and-demand report on Thursday, said Don Roose, president of Iowa-based U.S. Commodities.

"We are deeply oversold in corn and wheat. We think we are in the process of correcting that, going into a report. (It's) just shorts banking profits," Roose said.

On a bullish note, the USDA confirmed private sales of 103,000 metric tons of U.S. corn to Japan as well as 264,000 tons of soybeans to undisclosed destinations.

But soybean futures continued to decline, with the CBOT July contract SN26 down 5 cents at $11.16-1/2 a bushel. The contract traded above $12 as recently as May 29.

Brokers are watching for signs of renewed Chinese buying of U.S. soybeans and corn, which is still not visible despite the announcement in May that China would buy $17 billion worth of U.S. farm products a year on top of the 25 million tons of soybeans already committed.

Improving Midwest crop weather hung over the market, bolstering U.S. production prospects. Ahead of the USDA's weekly crop progress report, analysts surveyed by Reuters on average expected the government to rate 69% of the nation's corn crop and 68% of the soybean crop in good-to-excellent condition, each up 2 percentage points from a week ago.

Seasonal pressure from the harvest of winter wheat in the Northern Hemisphere capped rallies.

"Wheat still faces headwinds from prospects for large global new crop supplies with weather in Europe and the Black Sea looking non-threatening and U.S. (harvest) fears already traded," said Matt Ammermann, commodity risk manager at StoneX.

"Crop prospects in Russia and Ukraine remain positive, potentially creating more export competition to U.S. supplies."