If you're like me, you're always looking for meaningful literacy centers that will engage your students; however, getting those centers prepped and ready can be overwhelming at times! Now, I love a themed literacy center {proof here}, but there are times when I need center activities that are low prep and non themed so that I can pull them out any time I need a group of students to work on a specific skill.
When all of that in mind, I started working last summer to create some phonics activities for my students that I could use when they got to a certain phonics skill. Because I teach phonics in small group, and my groups are usually on different skills, I wanted something I could easily print, laminate, and cut. That's when I decided to make mats!

I started by making mats for my visual discrimination pack {read about it here}. When my students first started literacy centers at the beginning of the year, these were perfect to get them exposure to letters as well as sorting.

With most of my mat activities, I use them in a sensory bin. The students have the mat in front of them, and they use tweezers to find the pieces for the mats. 

For my kiddos working on beginning sounds, I have mats for sorting pictures by sound/beginning letter. These are perfect in the beginning of the year, and for mid-year for students who may need some extra reinforcement of those letter sounds.

Now that the majority of my students know their sounds, many of my students are working on sounding and blending CVC words, and CVC mats are perfect for this. There are two versions of these mats - one has the word and the pictures get sorted while the alternate has pictures on the mat and the words are sorted.

Our cards for the CVC mats are currently in our big sensory tub, which is filled with fake snow - messy, but the kids love it!

For my kids who came to me knowing the majority of their sounds and have mastered CVC words, we're now working on long vowel patterns. This week, we were working on long a spellings, so I only prepped those mats from my long vowel pack. I love that since they've been working with these mats this week, they're already so much more fluent in these words!

The thing I love most about these mats is that they're super easy to prep - print, laminate and cut {and it's all squares, so the cutting is easy!}. Because of that, I have a wealth of phonics resources at my fingertips whenever my students need to move to a new skill.

Update: :)
I was asked if I would bundle my mats, and I bundled all of them except for the letters, since they're part of my visual discrimination pack that has other activities. You can grab the bundle by clicking the picture below :)

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Vickie

Somehow, we've managed to already make it into our 7th week of school...7 weeks! Truthfully, it all feels like a bit of a blur, and in a few more months, I probably won't remember any of it {everyone says the beginning of kindergarten is like childbirth - right?}. However, right now, we are in the swing of workshops {what we call literacy centers}, and my kids are doing a great job! We have been working hard to work on our whisper voices, not interrupting my group, and using Rally Coach in many of our workshops {another Kagan structure I hope to share about soon!}.
At the beginning of the year, I have so many students on various levels, so I try to start meeting their needs immediately. For some, that means basic visual discrimination and fine motor. I've been using these lowercase letters and mats in a small sensory tub {this one has leaves for fall right now}, and having the kids use tweezers to pick a card, then put it on the correct mat. Best of both worlds!

When the kids finish finding all the cards, they can use a highlighter to do a little letter detective activity. They love highlighters!

We've also been working on our fine motor skills while practicing matching lowercase to uppercase letters. For this center, I got some paint sticks at Wal-Mart, wrote letters on them, wrote letters on clothespins, and that's it. Super easy! I also have a group that is matching lowercase to lowercase or uppercase to uppercase.

Some of my students began school already knowing many of their letters, so they've been working on beginning sounds. In my large sensory tub, I have dyed noodles, and my kids use the tweezers to find pictures and match them to the correct letter mat.

Another area my kids need a lot of practice in this year is letter formation/handwriting. We've been doing lots of roll and write with our letters and sight words and making our letters out of playdoh.

As we were getting deeper into small groups and workshops, I realized I was going to need more centers that worked on letters and sounds that were simple, quick to make, and still fun for the kids. So, I created a new pack of simple alphabet centers that can be used any time of year {each center comes in color and black and white!!}. So far, my kids have used the beginning sound clips, letter match puzzles, and beginning sound puzzles. For the puzzles, I don't have pre-made lines to cut the pieces. I free hand the cut so they are self correcting.

 To see more from my new center pack, you can click the picture below.

I'm also using, and will use in the coming months, some of my themed centers. It's a chore some times to change them out, but my kids love themed centers year after year! To see other centers from this post, click the pictures below.

If you don't currently use literacy centers in your classroom, I urge you to start taking baby steps to using them. It is truly amazing how much differentiation you can get in during this time, and the growth the kids make!

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Vickie

Oh my word, friends! Can y'all believe back to school comes Monday for me?!? I may be freaking out just a little bit since I haven't really done much in my room this summer! However, I have had school on my mind lately, and I've been thinking a lot about the new babies I will get in just over a week. I always have a wide range of levels, especially with letter and sound knowledge. I get students that have never heard of a letter, students that are sounding and blending, and those in between. When I get home from my vacation this weekend, I will start working on all the resources I love to have handy for the beginning of the year and beyond to help my students work on letters and sounds.

Since I have students with such a range of phonics knowledge, I don't do a great deal of phonics instruction whole group. However, at the beginning of the year, I do more than usual. First, I always review this little chart every morning with my students. {You can grab it free here}

Another thing I do whole group is sorts. I love sorts so much! They are quick, low-prep, and such great formative assessment! Here is how we do letter sorts - as a group and individually. We also do beginning sound sorts, but sadly, I don't have a picture. {You can see more about there here}

Another easy activity for the beginning of the year that gives students exposure to words that begin with a letter, but also gives them cutting and gluing practice are these alphabet printables. I usually put them out for morning work the first month because after the first few, they require no directions!

As soon as I can after we start school, I like to get my kids into literacy centers {we call them workshops}, and there, they can work on skills specific to their needs. Some will need basic visual discrimination activities {you can read my post on that here}, some will need letter matching activities, some will need sound matching activities, and a few will need something a little more advanced. Here's a few of the beginning of the year centers I will use:

Visual Discrimination Alphabet Sensory Tub

Letter Matching Clips - this is so easy! Get paint stirrers, write uppercase letters on them, then write lowercase letters on clothespins, and the kids match! Letter practice and fine motor!

Letter Match - another super easy and cheap center is to buy notepads and write uppercase and lowercase letters on them, cut them down the middle, and have kids match them.

Beginning Sound Mats Sensory Tub

Now, the beginning of the year is not the only time we need letter and sound practice. For many of my students, it continues throughout the year. Here are more examples of various ways we practice letters and sounds throughout the year:

Matching letter cards to pictures that start with that letter

 Rolling a die and covering a picture that begins with that letter

 Pulling an uppercase letter card and coloring the corresponding lowercase letter

 Clipping a letter for the beginning sound of a word

 Matching letters to beginning sound pictures with puzzles

 For some of my students, letters and sounds practice in literacy centers continues long after Christmas. However, for the most part, my students have a pretty solid foundation by Christmas, which means lots of reading the second semester!
I hope to blog lots more about our alphabet activities once school starts and I have a new group of sweeties to teach! If you're looking for lots more alphabet activities, be sure to check out Abby's Alpha-Boom post from today!

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Vickie

This summer, I've found myself reflecting on last year quite a bit. I've been thinking of things that I can improve on in the new school year {which is in 2 weeks for me - crazy!}, and as I thought about it, I realized that so many years, I get quite a few children with little to no visual discrimination skills! Because these children have had limited exposure to written language and don't get a lot of language experiences at home, I realized I need to beef up my pre-reading activities I use in my classroom.

Visual discrimination is an important piece in the puzzle of learning to read . Basically, it is a perceptual skill that refers to a person's ability to differentiate one object from another. When we read, our brain is constantly discriminating to figure out what a letter is, what a word is, etc. As I thought about my go-to beginning of the year concepts and activities, I knew I wanted to add some fun things to work on visual discrimination with my students. {Let me also mention that I've been using these at home with my 2 1/2 year old daughter and 5 year old niece, and they love them!}.
First, I love a sort of any kind! I made up some big letter cards and some that are just a bit smaller. At school, I'll let me students work with the cards of the letters we are working on in class, and most likely, they'll be working with a pocket chart. At home, I let the girls sort on the floor with the letters that start their names. I'll most likely do this with uppercase letters first, then lowercase. However, you could have students discriminate between the uppercase and lowercase variations of a letter.

The activity I'm most excited about is my letter mats. I made a simple mat {I didn't want it to be overly distracting} and letter cards that the students will match to the correct mat. There is a plain mat for each uppercase and lowercase letter, and there is also a mat with a beginning sound picture for each uppercase and lowercase letter, just as another reminder of the sound the letter makes. {Please note - there are no small picture cards for these mats. We're just working on letter discrimination} I'll be putting the cards in a sensory tub for the students to find and place on their mats.

For these mats, I put velcro on each square of the mat, and on the back of each small letter card. This was very helpful when my little one was "playing," since she could move around, and not knock the cards off.

As you can see, the mats were a big hit with my little one {she's 2 1/2, so I was interested to see if she cared about doing it, but she really enjoyed it and it was a perfect opportunity to talk about same and different}. When I was working with her, I didn't make a big deal about the letters going the correct way, since I was more focused on the letter going on the mat that it matched. :)

 Some other activities I will use are these letter detective printables. I'll most likely put them as a paper/pencil follow-up to the sorts or mats. For this activity, the students will color all of the boxes with the letters matching the large letter in the circle.

I'll also put these Not Like the Other printables in a center tub as a paper/pencil follow-up to the sorts or mats. In this activity, students will cross out the letter that is not like the others.

Last, to help practice finding which letter doesn't belong, I also made these cross out cards. I'll use these in small group and in literacy centers.

I truly hope these activities will help aide in my students' visual discrimination, which in turn, I hope will make them better readers! If you'd like any of the activities, you can grab them in my new pack. They're normally $5.75, but this week, they're on sale for $3.75!

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Vickie