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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
They say that Christmas is the most magical time of the year, and there’s nowhere that this is more true than in your kindergarten classroom. It’s that sweet spot for children between not truly understanding what Christmas is all about and becoming jaded and only obsessed with the gift part of the holiday. They will spend the month of December humming Christmas tunes and talking about Santa and his reindeer, so you need to make sure that your academic sessions are filled with Christmas activities to make the most of this fascination. These cute middle sound games for kindergarten are perfectly timed as most students in your room will be ready for sound and letter substitution work at this point in the year.
What Are Medial Vowels?
Having a flexible knowledge of short vowel sounds will make your students better readers as well as more efficient writers. These most commonly appear in the middle of words which is why they are referred to as medial vowels. In CVC words, the medial vowel always makes the same sound which is why kindergarten reading standards focus on the CVC middle vowel as a way of helping students sound out words and building their “word attack” skills.
Preparing CVC Christmas Games
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These full color middle sound games for kindergarten can be printed two or even four to a page to make a small deck for each student. Be sure to laminate them if you plan to do any of the extension tasks so that students can reuse them throughout the holiday season.
Extending CVC Christmas Reading
These middle sound games for kindergarten are simple to set up; simply print off a full set and you have one of your Christmas activities center ready to go. As your students master the short vowel sounds by choosing the right letter for each CVC word, you can use some of these extension activities to develop their skills:
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Read all the variations – for a bit of seasonal fun, have students read all the possible variations out loud (e.g. for c _ t, they would say cat, cet, cit, cot and cut). They will laugh at the nonsense words and start to recognize some other words that they know. This will develop their spelling skills as they repeatedly hear each CVC middle vowel.
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Write out the words – learning short vowel sounds is a first step on the way to being effective spellers. Have students work in partners. One person reads the target word out loud while their partner listens to the sounds and writes it out. They can then compare answers and celebrate each other’s success.
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Sort the deck – grouping words by spelling patterns helps students to see commonalities amongst words. Give students a completed deck of medial vowels cards and have them sort them firstly by the vowel, and then by their first and last sounds. Challenge them to repeat this task as quickly as they can.
Like this? Then you’ll love my 10 Christmas Themed Literacy and Math Centers. These easy-prep games will get your students working on letters, phonics, numbers and more!
Games included:
1) Elf-abet Handwriting Strips: learn letter formation then practice tracing and writing the capital letters and lowercase letters.
2) Beginning Sound Gifts: students will write in the first letter of the gift shown in each task card.
3) Christmas CVC Write the Room: includes 10 task cards to place around the room that students will hunt for plus a recording sheet for their answers.
4) Santa’s List of Letters: work on letter recognition of both uppercase and lowercase letters.
5) Read, Build and Write Word Mats: includes word cards for Dolch Pre-Primer, Dolch Primer and Fry First 100 words.
6) Christmas Lights Sorting Mat: sort the numbered Christmas lights into odd or even.
7) Build A Number Santa: students need to match the number on the hat with the dice representation, number word and tally mark to form a Santa Claus.
8) Santa Sleigh and Reindeer Number Cards: multiple ways to use for counting, matching, addition and more!
9) Christmas Ornament Counting: clip cards for counting up to 20.
10) Ginger-Bond Cookies: students will fill in the number bonds in each task card. Worksheet version also included.
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Books About Christmas That We Love:
Other Printables That Work On Learning CVCs:
1) Rhyme Time with Penguin CVC Clip Cards – Any winter literacy station that has penguins will be instantly engaging to the majority of your students. These kindergarten penguin theme CVC rhyming printable will have them practicing their short vowel and consonant sounds all season long.
2) Christmas CVC Read and Match– This fun Christmas printable activity can be used as a simple yet effective early reading center. In this free CVC printable game students look at each of the pictures and find a match from the three words listed by the side. This Christmas CVC words literacy center comes ready to print and play!
3) Space CVC Vowel Sorting – Kids will love this simple space-themed vowel sorting activity. Which planet does the object belong on? Sound it out loud for some out of this world fun!
Other Free Christmas Printables You’ll Love:
1) Christmas Printable Worksheet Pack – 50 pages of worksheets for mastering the alphabet, early math skills and more!
2) Christmas I Spy – This Christmas-themed I Spy is perfect for keeping little ones busy during the holidays.
3) Santa Land Spot the Difference – This game of visual discrimination will keep your kids busy for a while! Find the 10 differences between these 2 pictures of Santa Land.
4) Build A Number Santa – Preschool and kindergarten kids will match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus in this fun printable Christmas activity.
5) Gingerbread Number Puzzle Strips – Set of 3 differentiated gingerbread-themed number puzzles including one with dice representation.
Get The Tools You Need For This Center Here:
Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.
