Free Read-Aloud for the Snowy Days Ahead!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Whether you live in snowy Vermont or balmy Hawaii, kids everywhere love snowmen! What's not to love? Singing a rousing thumpety-thump-thump of "Frosty" or pouring on the glue and glitter to make your own crafty version, snowmen are just plain fun!

Add a good helping of sight words, some patterned text and sequencing in, and snowmen become another great opportunity for learning. Hey, Mr. Snowman! is a great way for your K's and firsties to listen to a story that will soon become accessible text to nearly all of them! Download a free printable 8 1/2 X 11 version here.

Then expand the learning opportunities with the set of coordinating literacy center activities that you'll find here. This set includes...

        * 2 printable versions of a guided reading book with the same text as the read-aloud version

        * A Readers' Theater version of the text

        * Sentence strips and word cards to use at the pocket chart

        * Props for improvising a new story {think, "Hey, Mr. Snowman, where are your sunglasses?" }

        * 3 writing prompt pages to extend the Mr. Snowman story

You can make an entire Mr. Snowman literacy center with these activities. Your needier students will get lots of chances to read and reread basic sight words, and  to attempt new words based on first letter and picture support. Those who need a challenge will enjoy creating and writing new adventures for Mr. Snowman. All of your students will benefit from the many opportunities offered in this story for fluency practice with inflection, reading the punctuation, phrasing, and using bold/italicized print.

Happy Teaching!