Are you looking for hands-on and engaging winter preschool activities for math & literacy? Keep reading to check out what’s a part of Littles Love Winter, our winter math & literacy packet!
Winter is a great theme to use in preschool classrooms. Not only are there SO many fun games to play & sensory bins to try, but it’s also great for ALL classrooms since it’s not related to a specific holiday or religion. Everyone can celebrate winter!
Littles Love Winter is a downloadable activity pack that includes 15 math & literacy centers + a book project designed for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten littles. These activities are hands-on, engaging, and aligned with the Arizona Early Learning Standards. They encourage your littles to explore foundational math & literacy skills through play, plus there’s a book project that goes along with the book How To Catch a Snowman by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton. Keep reading to see everything that’s included and how you can grab your own copy!
Looking for some great winter books for preschool? Check out this post!
WINTER PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES
These winter-themed word cards can be used in so many different ways! This download includes 15 winter-themed words, and each word comes in 4 different fonts: Uppercase, lowercase, uppercase traceable, and lowercase traceable. This activity also comes with a set of JUST the words (uppercase and lowercase) and JUST the pictures (giving students the chance to match them up). The possibilities with these cards are endless! You also get 3 activity pages for students to write these words if you choose to do a “Write the Room” activity with them and 1 page of pictures for them to “Color the Room.”
Looking for just the winter word cards? Check them out here!
This activity is super fun and gets kids up and moving! You’ll hide the snowflakes around the room or in a sensory bin and have students find them. Then they can mark off the letters on their check-off sheet. This set includes both uppercase and lowercase letters on the snowflakes, which can also be used for other winter activities as well.
Research has shown that having a strong base of phonemic awareness is crucial to developing strong reading skills, and the best way to work on this is through constant letter sounds practice. In this game, students will fly the bird with the picture to the correct letter tree to represent the picture’s beginning sound. This set includes all 26 capital letters.
Rhyming is one of those tricky skills…it seems so easy to adults, but it’s actually very tricky for kids! So I like to practice rhyming whenever I can in my class. For this activity, students will choose a card & read the word in the middle. Then they will find the rhyming pictures along the outside of the card and mark them off with a clothespin (or some other manipulative). This set includes 10 cards, and each card has 3 rhyming pictures for students to find.
Wouldn’t it be SO much easier to teach kids to read if all words in the English language followed the rules?! Sadly, this isn’t the case, which makes sight words a necessary part of developing a strong literacy base. These words don’t follow typical phonics patterns and can’t be sounded out, so it’s important for students to memorize them. But using flashcards is not the way to go. Research has shown that hands-on practice (through play!) is much more effective. For this game, students will read each sight word and toss a snowball into a container with the same sight word on it (which also works gross motor skills!) They can also use the letters to build the sight words on their own. (Sight words & letters come in both uppercase and lowercase letters.)
Before our students are able to write correctly, they need lots of fine motor practice in a variety of ways. This activity is great for that! Students will use stickers (or do-a-dot markers) to create a snowflake by following the lines. Not only will they be using their creativity, but they will also be using their fine motor skills.
CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) are an important part of learning to read. Being able to recognize each letter sound and then blend them together to read a word is so exciting for little ones! In this CVC activity, they will choose a snowman hat, then build three words that belong in that word family. There are 18 word families included. This activity works on rhyming and helps little ones see that just changing out the first letter in a word creates a new rhyming word, which will help them decode rhyming words more quickly.
We don’t get much snow where I live, so this is the only snowball fight my students will have this winter! After you print and cut each letter (or number), have your students crumple them up and throw them round the room for a “snowball fight” (I like to play music during this part!) Then open them up and say the letter names/sounds (or numbers) on the snowballs. My students always love this game, and I love how they’re learning through play!
How cute are those little gators?! This number activity helps students practice identifying which number is bigger or smaller when comparing two numbers, which is great for number sense. This set includes numbers 1-20 and gators to represent greater than, less than, and equal to.
Patterns are so important to practice with our little ones. They develop reasoning, critical thinking, and visual discrimination skills. This pattern activity includes 10 patterns to duplicate/extend and 10 patterns to fill in the missing pictures. Plus how cute are these pictures?! (Although my students thought the koala was a mouse haha!)
This is a fun winter way to practice counting! Have your students choose a snow globe and a number strip. You will help them place the number strip through the slit on the snow globe, then move it up and down so only one number is showing at a time. Number strips are 1-10 or 11-20, so you can choose which one to use based on each student’s level. Then ask them to add that many snowflakes to the snow globe. I’ve included paper snowflakes in this set, or you could use manipulatives such as snowflake mini-erasers or cotton balls! Bonus points if you bring in a snow globe to show your students!
This activity helps students practice identifying 2D shapes, which is an important math standard for early childhood. Students can use a pencil and paperclip to create a spinner on the snowman (or use a real spinner like this one from Amazon *Not an affiliate link). Spin the paperclip and name the shape it is pointing to, then mark that shape off of your check-off sheet. You can also have students trace the shapes (or create them with play dough) to extend the learning.
Ten frames are great for students to begin subtilizing (which is just a fancy way of saying that students are able to memorize the number of objects in a set without counting them). These penguin ten frames are perfect for that! This set includes ten frames for numbers 1-10, and each card includes the numeral, a traceable number word, and the ten frame. Also includes a set with the ten frame already filled in.
This activity asks students to create a bar graph or tally chart representing students’ favorite season. They can ask family or friends to get the data to fill in the tally chart or graph. Being able to create graphs and charts, and then use that information to answer questions, is a key component of math development and so helpful for critical thinking skills!
Want to add any of these activities to a winter sensory bin? Check out this post!
WINTER BOOK PROJECT
And last but not least, Littles Love Winter comes with a book project based on the book How to Catch a Snowman by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton. (Note: The book is not included in this download. You will need to buy the book yourself or borrow it from your local library. You can find it on Amazon here. *Not an affiliate link.)
This book project comes with comprehension questions, a poem, a song, directions for how to make a Marshmallow Snowman (with a printable template), and directions for how to make a Marshmallow Snowman snack. Yum!
We know that reading aloud to our little ones is the most important part of helping to prepare them for success in school and beyond, and doing book-themed activities increases the enjoyment level for our kids! So don’t skip this part!
THE BEST WINTER PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES
Phew! I think that covers everything! I’m so excited for you to check out these winter math & literacy centers and tell me what you think! If you have any questions about this download, you can always email me: [email protected].
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What are your favorite winter preschool activities? Comment below or find me on Instagram (@littleslovelearningblog). I’d love to hear about them!
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Happy Learning!
