FREE Printable Blends Sorting Mats for Winter

As we continue our journey learning to read we are doing lots of review with beginning blends and word families. I created these blends sorting mats in a fun winter theme to give my first grader some opportunity to review what she had learned so far.

Materials needed for the Free Word Work Printable for Blends:

Paper and/or card stock

Laminating sheets (optional, but highly recommended)

Clear velcro dots (optional)

Word work printable (at the end of this post)

Print the word work pack on paper or card stock and laminate it desired. Cut out the cards and the blend snowballs.

I like to attach clear velcro dots to the back of my pictures so that it gives my daughter a clear idea of how many pictures are supposed to be matched to each card. One of the cards is different from the rest in that it only has 5 pictures due to the lack of clip art for that blend.

To use:

Give the students 2-4 blend cards and the coordinating snowball pictures. Have the students sort the snowballs onto the blend cards. I like to only use up to 4 blends at time so that the activity is not too overwhelming for new readers. The last things I want to do is stress out my daughter and frustrate her to cause her to dislike reading. It’s very important that she has only positive experiences with reading now, to encourage her to try new skills. Since she is a reluctant reader (and learner in general) pushing her only causes her to push back. After she has done a few blends, I take a minute to assess her willingness level and then give her more if she is up for it. If not we move on to something else and can come back to the activity another day.

Once the students have been exposed to the activity once, it will be less stressful for them in the future.

You could also hide the snowballs in a sensory bin like this winter one to create a fun hands-on experience while learning. We did that with our alphabet letters back in August and it was a blast. As we use these this month, I’m sure we’ll do it again! It makes it feel much more like play than work.