Winter Literacy Activities for Centers or Small Group Instruction

Hello again! I updated my Winter Literacy pack from last year. I added to several centers to allow for differentiation. I use these activities with my kindergarten and first grade groups mostly, but there are a few activities that I use with my second grade students (that you could use with advanced first grade students). Every class is different, so I wanted to give you options for each activity in this pack. If you bought this last year, make sure you go and check out the additions. 

This is the same as last year, but one of my favorite activities to use with my kindergarten and first grade students during our reading group. 

This first activity I will be sharing with you! You can download this for FREE here! I believe in phonemic awareness so much and I hope there is more of an emphasis on this skill. :)

This is a new one. My kinders are starting to sound out words but they need those picture clues to help them. For this activity, they sound out the word card, then try to find the matching picture. 

Doesn't everyone love to play games?! This is a simple game but great for practicing onset and rime. There are two versions of this: long and short vowels. 

You can use this with your 2nd grade students or advanced 1st grade students. 

I also added a short and long vowel version for this activity. This can be a center, small group activity, or a whole class activity. The 2nd picture shows this activity being used with a bigger group. I put magnetic dots on the back of the word cards. Students come up and match the onset and rime. 

This also has short and long vowel version. 

This next activity actually has three options. There is the option to match onset and rime again with short and long vowels. This picture below shows matching two syllable words. I included several words with an open syllable for the first syllable and several with a closed syllable for the 1st syllable. 

Click the picture below to see a video showing how I use this during small groups:

The Snowy Word Fill has two versions. For first grade students, there is a silent e to drop in each word. Students will read it and determine if it makes a real word with or without the silent e. The second version below shows short vowel being filled in. 

This hot cocoa activity is another sorting activity. This time, students will sort by word family. There is also a long and short vowel option. 

I added a picture version of the syllable sort. There was already a syllable sort with words. This version has only pictures.

These cards are all about ending blends. I find that ending blends can be tricky for my students!

There are three other centers that I didn't have picture of! If you are looking for winter-themed literacy activities to use with your students, this might be just right for you. For my students, repetition is so important. I love to give them several opportunities to practice these phonics skills. They are basically doing the same thing over and over but they feel like they are doing something new and different every day because each activity looks unique. Keeps me from getting bored too! 

You can find these activities here: