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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Keeping your students on track and engaged in those final weeks is tough! Complete your summer lesson plan with this kindergarten literacy center where your students will be decoding secret code words from an exciting summer vocabulary list. As summer draws closer, you can almost feel the energy start to rise in your kindergarten classroom. Not only does the warm weather mean more time outside, it also means the end of the year and the promise of the long vacation months. These secret code words will give you plenty to talk about as you bring their kindergarten year to a successful end.
Practicing Letter Sounds
Even though the school year is coming to an end, you will want each summer lesson plan to help your students practice and rehearse all the essential skills that they will need to be fully successful in first grade. These summer themed secret code words help students practice three different skills all at once. Firstly, they need to say the name of each of the black and white pictures and figure out the starting letter sound. Secondly, they then need to say the name of the picture using the letters that they’ve just heard. Finally, they get some much needed letter formation practice as they write out the words from the summer vocabulary list.
Preparing Summer Secret Code Words
For this activity you will need:
Paper
Printer
Writing tools
Optional: laminator and dry erase markers
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Extension Secret Code Word Activities
Your students will quickly master these secret code words, but they’ll still want the excitement of the puzzle and the satisfaction of completing your challenge. You can extend their letter sound word with some of these activities at your summer kindergarten literacy center:
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Sound out with a partner – any time that you can turn your stations into games, you’ll automatically build the engagement with your students. To make these secret code words into a game, have one person say the names of the black and white pictures out loud (e.g. clock rocket apple ball) without showing the color picture to their partner. Their partner has to listen carefully and write down the word that they think was being spelled. The players can then share their answers and give each other a high five for a job well done.
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Create their own secret code – in the kindergarten classroom, mastery can always be demonstrated by having students make their own versions of a worksheet. In this case, you can brainstorm another summer vocabulary list and have students create their own code. They can change the code pictures (as long as the word has the correct starting sound!) to something more personal to them.
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Make it a treasure hunt – finally, you can make it into a movement break by creating a treasure hunt. Just cut up the cards, and put the colored pictures around the room. On the flipside of each picture, put the next black and white code. For some extra fun, make it so that the final clue has some sort of classroom treasure to reward them for their hard letter sound work!
More Preschool Math and Literacy Activities:
Need more help with your lesson planning? This bundle of literacy and math centers for preschool and kindergarten currently includes 20+ different themed packs – each pack comes with 5 literacy and 5 math centers. You’ll save a ton of time and so much money!
Fun Books For Summer:
Other Summer Printables You’ll Love:
1) 15 Sets of Clip Cards for Spring and Summer – Learn to count crabs, bees, flowers, etc from 1 to 10.
2) Summer Gross Motor Dice – printable dice for getting kids moving outside!
3) Ice Cream Measurement Cards – grab your rulers and learn how to measure length using ice cream cones.
4) Watermelon 4-piece Number Puzzles – works on number recognition, subitizing and counting all at once.
5) Summer Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of mixed worksheets working on various literacy and match activities.
6) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Literacy and fine motor skills are developed with these colorful playdough letter mats that your students will surely treasure.
7) Count and Compare Fish – In this fun game, kids will count and compare fish in a tank and fish in a bowl to see which has a bigger number and learn how to use the symbols greater than and lesser than correctly.
8) Firefly Counting – This math activity is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, and homeschooling or for busy parents looking for something their little one can do independently.
9) Flower Measurement Cards – Kids work on math and measurement in this spring flowers-themed printable.
10) Easy Mondrian Art – My preschooler loved doing this super simple tape and chalk art activity outdoors but if you don’t have a garden, you can download the printable I made for you!
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.
