These letter cards are used daily for the first few minutes of reading instruction in January and February. Then, I print, laminate, and cut each card out for prep. I have used similar cards since August so that children will understand the activity by January.
This month, we added blends to build CVC words and introduced building words with sh,th, and wh. There is also a blank snowflake page for other blends or words your children would enjoy reviewing. Finally, I store them in photo storage boxes. This document goes in order of difficulty, starting with a vowel and consonant cards, blends, high-frequency words, then blank snowflakes for additional learning and practice. The last page also includes sound boxes for students needing to use bingo chips or mini erasers to help decode/encode the word.
Game Steps & Ideas
- Toss snowflake consonant cards on the ground and ask students to find specific sounds or letters by stepping onto the card. For example, “find the sound that spells /m/.
- Add vowel cards onto the ground and again call out letters or sounds for students to take turns jumping on.
- Next, for a review of students blending and CVC word practice, hold up a blend card and ask students to make a word using a letter they are standing on. If it isn’t a real word, that’s okay- the focus is on blending the sounds accurately.
- Additionally, move this activity to a table and have students build more CVC words and sh,th, and wh-words using all the cards. Students can record their findings on the last page of this document. I laminate the cards and use expo markers to record words.
- On other days, start with holding up the blends first and quickly have students read each one aloud as a review before the game begins.
- Lastly, high-frequency word cards with heart symbols over the schwa sounds in words. I recommend using these cards with the sound boxes handout to help to decode these words.
Other focus skills to use while playing:
- Identifying letters a-z
- Identifying letter sounds a-z (short and long vowel sounds)
- Decode short vowel blends
- Build CVC words from given letters or blends and consonants
- Decoding practice using blends + consonant cards with sound box snowflake mat
- Encoding practice with blank snowflakes
- Mini pocket chart center
- Build short sentences with word cards.
Thank you for visiting Live Learn Literacy. For more activities please sees me below posts.
