So do you remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about not having a full week of school since we came back in 2014?  Our schedule has been disrupted by weather related early releases & 2 hour delays, snow days, as well as holidays.  Well, the first week in February brought us our first normally scheduled week in 2014.  To make up for that, we only had a day and a half of school last week!  Ahhh!.  I need my routine back!

Warm milk, 1/2 tsp cocoa, 1 tsp pure maple syrup

This latest round of snow (Winter Storm Pax) was BEAUTIFUL!!  It brings back memories of Winter days as a little girl in Virginia.  I vividly remember one snowstorm where we walked through town on snow covered roads to get some biscuits and hot cocoa at Hardees.

She was determined to roll this all the way home!

This snowfall gave me a chance to create similar memories with my own kids.  We caught snowflakes on our tongues, played snow-soccer, made hot cocoa, and walked through the neighborhood.  My daughter rolled a snowball all the way down the street…it ended up bigger than my youngest son!  Although my girl’s weekend to NYC was canceled, I was able to make precious memories that I wouldn’t trade!  It’s amazing that within one week’s time here we will have had 8 inches of snow, rumblings from a nearby earthquake, and 70 degree temperatures.

I started my Olympics unit at the beginning of February.  I have more than enough language-based materials, however  I realized as I got started that I didn’t have much in the way of structured articulation activities.  So in between my snowball fights and homemade hot cocoa, I put together this Gold Medal Articulation packet (and it’s a freebie!)

It has two pages of empty boxes that can be used numerous ways (You can copy them front/back or copy the word list on the front with one page of boxes on the back).  There are 12 boxes on each page, so a total of 24 boxes.  Each target sound list also has 24 words.  Here are some of the ways I plan on using these pages:

Vocabulary write-ins: your students can write words that match the pictures to practice vocabulary

They can copy words from their sound lists (there will be enough boxes for each word if you use both pages)

Write target words ahead of time using a white crayon…

…then students use a marker for the magic reveal! (My personal favorite!)

The word lists will also be good to teach and review thematic vocabulary, so if your students are working on multi-syllable words, final consonants, or just vocabulary exposure you can choose one of the word lists and work with those words.

You can choose from 5 different word lists

There are 5 different word lists, covering 5 sets of sounds: s, z, s-blends; r, r-blends; vowel+R; sh, ch, j; l, l-blends.  Each word list has 24 target words.  They can be used on their own or in conjunction with the other materials.

Emerging writers can use the color coding to find and highlight sounds in beginning, middle, and end positions

I like for even my youngest students to have an awareness of the sound-symbol correspondence.  We often talk about which letters are used to write our target sound and where the sound is heard in the word.  Students quickly learn that they need to listen for the sound, because there might be a silent letter at the end of the word.

Students sort and write words based on sound position

Students who can copy or write words can use the medal sort to group their words based on the target sounds being in the beginning, middle, or end position.

I hope you enjoy this latest addition to my winter sports activities.  I’ve really enjoyed hearing the stories of the various athletes and watching the suspenseful action!  It’s hard to believe that there is only one week left!