Winter Word Activity

This week we have been reading winter books such as the The Snowy Day, Snow, and Frozen Noses, despite the fact that it was 65 degrees yesterday.  We don't live anywhere near Florida.  I'm not complaining, really; but I do like ONE nice snowfall of the season.  Watch, I've probably just jinxed myself and we'll be buried knee deep in snow next week and have cabin fever.

I thought I'd share one activity that we had fun doing that was based on these books.  I was inspired by a sight word activity that I saw on I Can Teach My Child.  I chose to focus on Winter words, though, instead.  Here's what we did.

After reading our winter books:

1) we went back through the stories and found all of the winter-related words.  I pointed to them, said them aloud, then asked baby bookworm to do the same.

We found chill, scarf, snow

2) Then, I asked baby bookworm to find some winter related words on her own.  So, for example I would say, can you find the word "winter" on this page, it begins with the letter "w".  Of course, I would help her out if she was stumped.

Identifying the word winter

3) Once she pointed to a word, I then wrote that word on an "index card" that I made out of blue construction paper.  As I wrote the word, I spelled it aloud.

4) When we were finished writing all of our winter words out from the books, I took some glue and traced each letter in the word.  As I traced it, I would ask baby bookworm to identify the letter and its sound.

5) Then the fun part - once I had applied the glue (an older child could have done this himself), baby bookworm sprinkled sugar over the word.

The result was a bunch of pretty and glistening winter words.  Oh, and a kitchen floor with lots of sugar on it.

What a fun-filled way to practice two important pre-reading skills: Letter Knowledge & Phonemic Awareness.  


If you wanted to make this activity more challenging you could try: clapping the syllables in the words, and doing a little blending and segmenting.

If you wanted to make this activity more baby/young toddler friendly, you could write the words in whipped cream or finger paint rather than using glue and sugar; maybe stick to just letters or even winter pictures.  


Learning Tip:
Don't throw your words out!  About a week or so later after doing an activity such as this one, you should go back and review what you've done.  For this lesson, we will actually do a mini version of what we did the first time around (without the craft part).