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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
It can be almost impossible to keep your first-grade students under control as the month of December rolls around. Once the fun and festivities of Thanksgiving are done, little brains turn to snow, Santa, and presents and it can be hard keeping them engaged in their school work amid all the excitement. This fun Christmas printable activity hooks students in with its seasonal decorations and keeps them there with a simple yet effective early reading center to master Christmas CVC words.
The Importance of Reading CVC words
While it can seem that it takes forever in kindergarten to cover all the letters and the different vowel sounds, it’s always time well spent when it comes to mastering the first-grade skill of reading and writing CVC words. These are a great place to start young students on their reading journey as there are no exceptions as to how words are pronounced or how to know if a vowel has a short or long vowel sound. Using free CVC clip cards is a great way for students to build their comprehension of this reading strategy as they can be self-correcting for an independent station or used as a small group teaching tool.
Preparing Christmas CVC Words Read and Match
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Extending Reading With Christmas CVC words
The essence of this free CVC printable activity is that students look at each of the pictures and find a match from the three words listed by the side. With regular practice, your students will master these cards in just a short time, so use these extensions to help them with reading CVC words:
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Give more options – the easiest way to extend this Christmas printable activity is to give the students more than 3 options to pick from. This can be done by printing extra copies of the Christmas CVC words and giving students two sets of possible answers to pick from. Have them read each word out loud so that you know that they’re not guessing.
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Cut the cards – each of these free CVC clip cards has a picture and three possible options for students to choose from. Turn it into a speaking and listening activity by cutting each clip card in half. Give one student the picture part of a card and the other student the list of possible answers. The student with the picture reads their word out loud and their partner indicates which word they heard.
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Play memory – to make a collaborative game out of this free CVC printable, cut up the pictures and one copy of each word. Spread them out in two piles and have students take it in turns to turn over one picture and one word (reading it out loud of course!) and try to find all the matches as quickly and accurately as possible.
This game is also available as digital Boom Cards which can be used with Seesaw, Google Classroom and other distance learning platforms. Grab these Internet task cards here.
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) Build A Santa Numbers 1-10 – Match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus
2) Christmas Bake Sale Counting Clipcards – Counting up to 20 with fine motor practice
3) Colorful Christmas Stocking Sorting – 6 color mats with 10 different toys to sort
4) Reindeer and Sleigh Number Match to 10 – Match the respective reindeer and sleigh numbered 1-10 for number recognition practice or use it for counting up to 10 by lining up the correct amount of reindeers
5) Santa Sums to 10 – Print out 2 copies of the special dice, roll and record each one, then use the mat to add them up
6) Santa Pre-writing Tracing Strips – 9 different strips included
7) Santa Rhyming Bingo – Find rhyming words for -at, -am, -ug, -ig and -ap word families on the bingo card. 4 different cards included.
8) Santa’s List Pick and Tick Letters – Prepare the letter cards and place them in a bag or sensory bin then practice letter recognition as the child ticks them off Santa’s list. Upper and lowercase letters included.
9) Christmas Gift Sight Word Tagging – Match up the sight word-labeled gifts and tags. 40 Pre-primer words included.
10) Elf Alphabet Fine Motor Letter Mats – Form the letter using playdough or other materials you choose then practice writing out the uppercase letters.
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Books About Christmas That We Love:
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.
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
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.
