Christmas Stockings Letter Sounds Activity
Inside: This free printable Christmas stockings letter sounds activity gives preschoolers hands-on practice working on letter recognition and initial sounds.
“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care…”
One of the exciting things about Christmas is hanging up stockings for Santa to fill. You can use that idea to make working with the alphabet extra fun this holiday season.
Christmas Stockings Letter Sounds Printable
Your students can pretend to hang up these little printable stockings, matching the letters and naming the animal (and its initial sound).
Skills Covered
The letters are printed on both the fireplace template and on the color stockings, so this is easy enough for beginning letter learners. Each stocking also has an animal beginning with that letter so that they can also work on pairing print to sound.
(If you want them to work on just matching uppercase to lowercase letters, they may enjoy this Hot Chocolate Letter Sounds activity.)
What’s Included in the Free Printable
This 3-page printable includes 8 fireplaces and 26 stockings. I grouped the letters so that similar shapes and sounds are often together.
Preparation & Materials
You will want to cut out each fireplace and stocking. The lines are pretty thick, so even though there are stockings for all 26 letters it goes pretty quickly. You could definitely finish while watching Rudolph or Frosty!
I also recommend laminating these so that you can use them every year.
You may want to add Velcro fasteners or magnets to the backs as well.
How to Play
Choose just one or two fireplaces for children to work with at first. Then turn all the matching stockings upside down. Students will turn over one stocking at a time and place it on the matching spot on the mantel. Continue until all the alphabet stockings are hung.
Alternatively, you could put the colored stocking pieces in an opaque bag to represent Santa’s sack. Then children could pull one stocking at a time from that.
Extend the Learning with Books
I went looking for a few picture books to go along with this activity.
The Berenstain Bears’ Night Before Christmas of course mentions “the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there” – but it does it in a book that is more accessible for preschoolers.
Christmas at the Zoo by Bruce Foster is a cute pop-up book that sounds perfect, but I wasn’t able to get my hands on it to review it for you. It is about zoo animals getting ready for Christmas – a nice match for the animal stockings in this letter sound activity.
Download the Christmas Stockings Letter Sounds Printable
Ready for the free Christmas stockings letter sounds printable for this activity?
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Happy Teaching,
Heather