Sounding Out, Holiday Relay

Grade: K, 1, 2

Group Size: Small Group, Large Group

Length: 15 minutes

Materials: scoreboard, cards cut out in the shape of holiday symbols (stars, pumpkins, snowflakes, etc.) with letters or pictures attached

Goal: Given a sound or word, students can find a corresponding picture, letter, or group of letters.

Items: Letter sounds, beginning sounds, ending sounds, vowel sounds; spelling whole words using word families and sight words

What to do

Determine the level of skill on which you want to focus. Depending on your class's skill level, you should either write letters or glue pictures on the holiday cards. Make as many sets of identical cards as there are teams.
Divide students up into multiple teams; make sure there are not too many students on each team. The more teams and the smaller the team sizes, the more engaged students will be.
Place multiple sets of cards at sprint distance away from the starting place.
Call out a sound or a word. One student from each team races to the pile and finds that card or the cards that match the sound or sounds in the word. The word is elf. Find the letters in the word elf.
Students race back to the starting point and display their cards (in the correct order, if applicable). The team that reaches the line first with the correct card or cards receives one point for speed and one point for the correct items. All other teams receive a point if they return with the correct items.

It's easy to adjust the activity to address rhyming words, words with same number of phonemes or syllables, sight words, and word families.