Winter Kindergarten Activities | Free Literacy Center!

Published: December 17, 2022
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Winter kindergarten activities and creative ideas for little learners. Your students will love these fun hands-on activities for the winter season! Plus a free literacy center to practice beginning and ending digraphs!

Winter Kindergarten Activities

Winter is here! Are you living life in a winter wonderland? Or are you stuck in frozen mode and just counting the days until Spring Break?

Wherever you’re teaching, whether you’re a classroom teacher or a homeschooler, relax and know that winter time in your classroom just got easier! All the prep and planning for some great snowy day activities has been done for you!

Grab a hot chocolate, indulge with some mini marshmallows, and let’s make sure your winter time centers for kindergarten are all ready to go, just when you need them most! So, while you dream of that first snow day school closing, take a look at these engaging winter themed activities that you and your students will love.

Writing Center Activities for Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade

What if having engaging winter, writing center tasks for kindergarten was easy? This winter set of writing center activities is just that! It was designed as a great way to set up your kindergarten writing centers for independent work that will last all year long!

When I was slogging through a loooong cold winter back in 2011, I created this phenomenal writing center bundle. I was desperate for some engaging writing activities, designed for kindergarten students to complete independently. The activities needed to be low-prep, so that my centers were EASY to run—for me, the students, and other teachers as well.

Since then, I’ve updated and expanded the bundle to include first grade and second grade writing activities. The learning tasks in this set are so much fun, they’ll hook even the most reluctant writers!

Everything is here to make your writing station successful in your own classroom. The skills included in each monthly set remain consistent, with various differentiated options for the different activities. Because some kindergarten students are writing complete sentences, while others are still focused on fine motor skills, the differentiation in this set makes it a real life-saver!

You can find the bundle of writing center activities for the entire year, here:

Writing Center for Kindergarten, 1st Grade, & 2nd Grade

Poetry and Songs for Shared Reading

Poetry for shared reading? Absolutely!

Brain research shows that multiple areas in the brain are activated when students see print, hear music, and move along with the songs and poems at the same time. This multi-sensory brain stimulation leads to more engaged learning and more JOY!! Poetry quickly becomes a fun way to improve fluency and vocabulary too!

With this poetry shared reading activity, once the weekly poem has been learned and practiced, you can add the poem to your poetry center. Your kindergarten and first-grade students will absolutely love visiting them again and again! This is also a great way to boost student confidence as they “read” these familiar poems.

Here’s how it works:

Each poem of the week is chosen to be perfect for your kindergarten or first grade students. (The poems are set to a familiar tune so your students can sing along!)

The sing along becomes an easy fluency practice activity that’s both engaging and joyful!

Your students will love these poetry lessons and have a great time learning with them! And you’ll love how easy they are to use!

What makes these poetry lessons so helpful?

All the planning is done for you, a 5-day fluency plan with engaging lesson ideas for shared reading time.
Because the poems are set to familiar tunes, students learn them quickly. (One of my favorite things about this activity is when you notice the kids singing the poems again and again…even when it’s not poetry time!)
The poems are in a variety of formats (printable and digital) so you just select the version that works best for you. The best part is that you can do this activity 3 ways:
- with a pocket chart,
- display the poem under your document camera,
- or use it in Google Classroom or Seesaw.

I have a whole blog post just on winter poetry! Be sure to check it out here:

Easy Winter Poems for Kindergarten

Winter Kindergarten Center Activities: Sentence Building and Writing

Building Sentences with Predictable Simple Sentences for Winter and January is a great way to support simple sentence writing for your emergent learners. What makes this set of activities so great, is that we already learned how to use the pocket chart station as part of our group learning way back in August.

Once we learn the activities, we can work independently at this station. Each month, we just swap out the sentences and vocabulary words in this center. We love the support that these predictable sentences provide. This activity can be used as a sentence writing center, or as a whole group sentence writing activity. It can also be used as an interactive writing activity.

There are two emergent readers that are included in this packet. Both provide a predictable and simple sentence text for your kindergarten classroom. Your kindergarten students will be able to practice writing simple sentences and have handwriting practice at the same time!

You can find this winter center activity as part of the year-long bundle.

Predictable Sentences The COMPLETE Bundle

Winter Math and Literacy Centers

These math and literacy activities are a great addition to your winter theme lesson plans this time of year. In this Arctic animals math center, students have fun counting the polar bears, walruses, seals, and more!

What better way to practice different skills? In this center, students are practicing lowercase letters, which can absolutely be a need for some of your students in January.

These fun winter activities are LOW-PREP and they are available in 2 versions – colored clipart and black ink only! Plus you will love that these activities are purposely predictable and the bundle is perfect for the entire year!

You can find the winter math activities and literacy activities in this January set:

Kindergarten Math Centers and Literacy Centers for January

Would you like stations for the whole year? Check out the bundle here:

Kindergarten Math and Literacy Centers for the Year

Just Roll With It! More Kindergarten Centers!

These Winter Math and Literacy Pocket Dice Centers are perfect for those long cold winter days when you need to keep the kids inside but still keep them excited about learning! They are editable so you can select which letters, sounds, words, or numeracy skills you want your student to focus on during math centers or literacy centers.

Kids LOVE the pocket dice and they’re a perfect way to increase student engagement. This activity will be one of your go-to centers for both literacy skills and math skills.

I also love that these center activities are intentionally predictable. You teach the activity once, and the kids can literally just roll with it! No surprises! That way you can free up instructional time so you can meet with your small groups. Meanwhile, your students will be working in a meaningful way, on some great activities, during center time.

This set of center activities is totally customizable and editable! You choose the skills you want your students to focus on. There are also several editable response pages and interchangeable cards which allow you to differentiate and focus your students’ practice work. Many of the activities also provide a variety of levels, for even MORE differentiation!

You can find this winter center activity as part of the year-long bundle.

Math and Literacy Center: Just Roll With It The BUNDLE

Winter Riddle of the Day

These winter Riddles of the Day are a fantastic activity that reinforces reading skills such as inferring and looking for text evidence, in a fun and engaging way. Each day, your students will get excited about hearing and solving the riddle! Additionally, you can target other skills like sight words, phonics, and phonemic awareness! Your class will love the riddle of the day!

Winter Read-Aloud Activities and Lesson Plans

There are so many great books with fun winter themes out there! Many of them lend themselves beautifully to read aloud activities, crafts and reading skills lessons! Reading comprehension goes through the roof when students learn with these activities and lessons. For teachers, they are low-prep, engaging, skills-based, and just plain FUN for your little learners!

Here are a few of my favorite winter read alouds. Make sure to check out the links for engaging lesson plans for each book.