10 Activities for Teaching and Practicing Letters and Sounds

So it’s late November and we have just a few first graders who have not yet mastered their letters and sounds.  For these little firsties, we needed to readjust their intervention plan and bump it up a knotch in terms of intensity.  It’s always difficult to find time in a jam-packed school day, but mastering letters and sounds is really important and must take priority right now.  One way to add intervention time is to teach volunteers and/or the child’s parent in how to teach and practice letters and sounds.   Having the right activities available and directions for correctly using the activities is really important.  I’ve collected 10 of my most favorite activities for teaching letters and sounds and gathered them

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Fun Snowball Digraph Sorting Activity

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know by now I love my Walmart.  I mean I REALLY love Walmart!  The seasonal section is right at the entrance and it’s my very first stop in the store.  I especially love the seasonal section during Christmas.  There are so many items that jump off the shelf shouting “make me into an activity!” The fun find this week are these cute little snowmen containers (the penguin containers are adorable, too).  I decided that they’d be great for a sorting activity.   Although I have two pictured here, you may want to purchase four as I have digraph snowball pictures for sh, ch, th and wh.  This activity is easily differentiated as you can choose how many

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R Controlled Vowels

When a vowel is followed by an r, the r changes the sound that the vowel makes.  The vowel is called an r-controlled vowel.  Sometimes teachers refer to the “r” as the “bossy r” because the r “bosses” the vowel to make a new sound.  When the “a” is followed by r, it makes the sound you hear in “bar” or “car”.  When the “o” is followed by the r, it makes the sound you hear in the word “corn”.  The “ir”, “ur” and “er” make the same sound /er/ as in the words “bird”, “fur” and “her”.   It is important to teach students to recognize and practice words containing r-controlled vowels. Here’s a little freebie for practicing r-controlled vowels. 

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Thanksgiving Rhyming Activity

While shopping at one of my favorite craft stores last week–that would be Michael’s– I found these little felt turkeys.   They are really stickers that come 7 in a packet.  I thought they’d make such a cute rhyming memory game for either a preschool or kindergarten literacy center.   When you download this file, you’ll received 28 rhyming pictures so you’ll need 4 packets of felt turkeys.  If you don’t live near a Michael’s Craft Store, I’ve included 28 printed turkeys for you to use. Click the following link to download the rhyming pictures Thanksgiving Memory Game Hurry! Hurry! run and get those turkeys before they put up their Christmas supplies.

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Thanksgiving Activities

Kyle (fab artist) did a bang up job on this little turkey!  I love this guy!  I quick made him into a beginning sounds and word family activity.   Just for fun I made a math facts to 10 activity which you can download for free. Click HERE to download Turkey Feathers Beginning Sounds from my TpT store Click HERE to download the Turkey Feathers Word Families activity from my TpT store. Click HERE to download this FREEBIE! Here’s another fun little small group activity for practicing word families during the fall.  Students fill their word family pumpkin patches with the corresponding pumpkin pictures. Click HERE to download the Pumpkin Patch activity from my TpT store.

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Super Easy DIY Project- Loud, Rolling Dice Problems Solved!

This week I was visiting a second grade classroom during math centers and the teacher had such a clever and simple idea for keeping those rolling dice contained in an area for the math games.  I loved how independent and on-task the students were during math centers and tools such as this really go a long way in keeping centers functioning in a way that promotes student learning.  So here it is–it’s so simple!  It’s simply felt glued to the bottom of a ice cream lid.  The small ridge of the lid keeps the dice in the area.  So incredibly clever! So here’s how you make it. Step 1:  Using a marker, trace a circle using the lid as a guide

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