You will need:
- White card
- Felt pens
- Cotton wool balls
Step 1: Draw a jolly snowman
On a piece of white card draw a snowman.
Make sure his belly is nice and big.
You can make your snowman prettier by colouring in his hat and scarf.
Or perhaps your children could do the colouring in?
Step 2: Write some letters on his tummy
Using a black felt pen write some letters on the snowman’s tummy.
Make sure they are nice and clear.
Place cotton wool balls all around your snowman to look like snowballs.
You are now ready to play.
Game 1: Spot the sound
Read out the sound of a letter on the snowman’s tummy and ask your child to find it and cover it with a snowball. If they get stuck then remind them of the sound and what shape the letter makes. Carry on shouting out the sounds until your child has covered them all up and has finished the game.
If your child wants to play again instead of drawing out a whole new snowman you can simply cut out an oval shape of card to fit over the snowman’s tummy and cover up all the letters already there. You can then draw a new set of letters on this new board and play again.
Game 2: Snowman bingo
Make four or five snowmen. Write letters on their tummies. You can write the same letter on more than one snowman. But draw a nice mix of letters and always make sure you have the same number of letters on each snowman.
Give each child a snowman and some ‘snowballs’. The aim of the game is to cover up their letters when they hear you shout them and the first to cover them all wins.
You can either just shout out different letters of the alphabet until one child wins or you could use a bag of Scrabble letters to pull out and read.
If you are feeling very creative you could even make your own little bag of letters by writing letters of the alphabet on small squares of card and popping them in a bag.
When one child covers up all the letters on their snowmen, they shout ‘Bingo’ and have won the game.
Extension activity
If your child is learning to read and is beginning to sound out letters then you could write simple words on the snowmen instead of letters.
We chose some Christmassy words for children to spot.
You could write rhyming words instead.
