4 Free Holiday Products for Your Science of Reading Curriculum

It’s December, friends, and time for full-on chaos in the classroom. I’ve been keeping the lid on the holiday boiling pot for 28 years now. One thing that helps keep the little sugar plums from dancing too much each day is a fun holiday activity. Naturally, school admin wants instruction to continue as usual while you try to scrape your little elves off the ceiling. I’ve got you. Here are a few Science of Reading free holiday products to help your K-2 students keep it together until winter break begins.

Holiday Alphabet Review Activities

This freebie has a digital and PDF component to help you review letters. This can be a cut and paste center for your small group time. You could use other parts of it as a technology center for your students. You could laminate some of it for reusable small group activities. In fact, you could stretch this to a couple of days’ worth of lesson plans. Did I mention it’s free?

Holiday-Themed Foldable PDF Decodables

I can’t teach little readers without decodables to read in class and send home for practice. These two free foldable books will serve both purposes. They can be used in December or you could hand them out at other times of the year. All you do is print, copy, and fold. No fighting with the copier over what order to arrange the pages—this is why I make all my decodables this way. I have a history of copying fails—many trees have died because I couldn’t get the book order right. This is one of my favorite of the free holiday products.

Free Holiday Products: Alphabet PDF and Digital Matching Games

These games helped me tremendously during holiday virtual classes with Kinder and first grade students back in quarantine. The kids loved them. When we returned to in-person instruction, I projected these games onto my board. I try to incorporate games and activities into all my lessons to help students exercise their working memories. There’s nothing like a good old “Concentration” game to help. These memory-type match games will help students match pictures to the corresponding letter you’re trying to review. You can also use these in PDF form if you color the backs of the papers you print. A couple of free games makes me happy. Hope you enjoy it too!

Free Set of Holiday-Themed CVC Elkonin Boxes

I love making sensory bins out of these Elkonin boxes for my kids to play. I fill a box with cotton balls and “hide” these laminated cards inside. The kids find them and write the words on them in dry erase markers. This helps with orthographic mapping. I also have kids tap and manipulate sounds using only the boxes during small groups as a way to develop phonemic awareness. This set is differentiated—beginning, middle, and ending sounds are written in separately. There are also blank spaces. This is one of the most fun of the free holiday products!