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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
The feeling of spring in the kindergarten classroom is a joy to behold. After the long winter months, the change towards warmer weather, longer days and more sunshine reinvigorates your students. It’s a great time to take on one of the biggest kindergarten spring literacy projects: counting syllables. These cute syllable words clip cards are a great way to bring your spring classroom theme to your literacy centers, and all the spring words will get you and your students talking about the changes that the new season brings.
Why Worry About How Many Syllables?
Given the relative complexity of the rules surrounding how many syllables a word has (at the basic level, this is a count of the number of long and short vowel sounds in each word), it seems strange to teach syllable words to kindergarten students. However, having them master this skill helps them to be better readers as it helps them break longer words apart into easier to read pieces. It also helps them become better writers as it’s easier to learn to spell longer words by listening for the sounds in each syllable first.
Preparing Spring Syllable Words
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Spring Syllable Words Activities
Before students can attempt this kindergarten spring literacy task independently, you will want to spend some time as a whole class (or in small groups) talking about how to listen for vowel sounds in a word and the “rhythm” that these spring words make as they’re spoken. As students develop mastery in counting syllables, try some of these activities to deepen their understanding:
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Sort by syllables – there are 30 of these adorable spring words with a different number of syllables, so you can create an effective literacy center by having students group the words by the number of syllables they have. This should lead to interesting discussions about the types of sounds that they hear, any spelling patterns they notice and the length of the word compared to how many syllables it has.
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Make your own – it’s one thing to be able to count the number of syllables in a word from a card, and quite another to find words that fit a certain number of syllables. You can use your classroom as a hunting ground for finding words of certain syllable lengths, as well as creating a personalized syllable project using the first and last names of the students in your class (as well as the adults in the room too).
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Practice spelling – the goal of counting syllables is to help students become better writers, so you can lead some small group or individual work on using syllables to master spelling. Start by having students copy words from the clip cards, linking the spelling patterns to the number of syllables. You can then further this by finding other common words with 1, 2 or 3 syllables to practice spelling with.
Your students will love these Flower Alphabet Mats!
Print out the beginning letter mats full page size and laminate them. Then lay out some tokens like flower mini-erasers, spring-colored pompoms, etc for a super easy prep literacy center.
Your students will place a token to cover each picture that starts with the letter on the mat. There are 9 pictures for each alphabet sound to find ( except for the letter X which has 9 pictures that start with or end with it).
BONUS! I have also included a black and white version so that you have the option to make these into worksheets or coloring pages instead. These would be perfect to send as homework or for early finishers in the classroom!
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Some Fun Books for the Spring Season:
Other Spring Printables You’ll Love:
1) May Spring Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of free printable worksheets including a variety of literacy, math, and fine motor activities.
2) Spring Flowers Draw and Count – Students will need to draw the number of flowers stated on the page.
3) Spring Code Words – Solve the coded puzzle to find out the Spring themed vocabulary words.
4) Spring Counting Clipcards – This activity is perfect for preschool number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and counting skills.
5) Spring Color By Number Pack – There are 6 spring-themed color-by-number pages included in this pack.
6) Bird Theme 3 Part Cards – Set up this free printable as proper 3 part cards for a spring literacy activity or as a preschool science center to help your students learn the names of different birds.
7) Weather Math Worksheets Pack – 9 different math worksheets inside this weather-themed activity pack for working on number order, shapes, counting etc.
8) Count The Kites 1-10 – Practice counting while strengthening their little hand muscles at the same time with this set of counting clip cards.
9) Raindrops Counting Frames – Keep your kids busy indoors with this rain-themed counting activity.
10) Missing Number Eggs – Practice counting from 1-20 with this cut and paste activity.
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.
