Christmas Muffin Tin Reading Games

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I like to share lots of reading games and activities on Growing Book by Book.  One of our all-time most popular posts is the Muffin Tin Reading Games.  Today, I’m sharing some more fun reading games that use a muffin tin with a holiday twist!

3 Holiday Reading Games that Use a Muffin Tin

These few simple supplies are all you need for three fun reading games!

Full Disclosure:  This post contains affiliate links.

1.  Spring a Sound

This game gives kids practice identifying beginning sounds.

Place a sticker of an object in each paper muffin cup.  I love to use stickers from the 1000 Stickers book.  The images are realistic and there is a great variety.  I use them for all sorts of literacy games.

Fill a muffin tin with the picture paper liners.

Take a green chenille stem and twist it around your finger to form a small Christmas tree.  This will be your spring.

Time to play.  Have the child squeeze the spring tree flat.  Point towards the muffin tin board and release.  When the tree lands in a space, the child says the word and then says the sound they hear at the beginning of the word.  Continue to play until interest fades.

Variation:  Identify ending sounds

2.  Three in a Row

This games helps children practice sight words from a Dolch word list.

Use 6 red paper liner cups and 6 green liner cups for a festive touch.  Write a sight word that your child needs to practice identifying in each liner.

Place the liners in the muffin tin.

Gather a handful of playing pieces (red and green pom pom balls, pouch caps or hard wrapped holiday candy).

The adult calls out a word.  The child locates the word and places a playing piece on top.  The goal is to get three in a row in any direction to win.

Variation: Identify vocabulary words

3. Snow Covered Synonyms

This activity helps kids build their vocabulary!

You will need 12 green cupcake paper liners to represent the trees.  Write a Tier 2 vocabulary word on each liner.  I used words that could be associated with the holiday season.

Next, take 12 white cupcake paper liners to represent the snow.  Write a synonym for each of the green words.

The object of the game is to cover all the trees with a snow synonym.

Variations: Try pairing antonyms.  For younger children you could do lowercase and uppercase letters.

For all of these activities I wanted bright festive cupcake liners.  I used these baking cups from Wilton.

Check out more fun muffin reading tin games.

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