Visual Discrimination with Snowflakes

Part of learning to read is being able to notice very subtle differences between letters and words, both visually and aurally. For example, many students struggle at first to visually tell the difference between the letter "d" and "b," and frequently confuse the two letters. This month we've been spending some time practicing visual and sound discrimination, by using our eyes and ears to determine whether two items are the same or different.

I made these simple snowflake puzzles as a way to practice working with visual details. I purposefully selected some snowflakes that were similar in shape and form, but still different.

I printed each snowflake twice, placing one set onto black paper before laminating them all. I then cut the single snowflakes in half (which is also a great visual for showing snowflake symmetry). I first just set them out for the students to interact with. They could find snowflake matches in two ways- put the individual snowflakes together, or try to find the pieces that match the snowflakes on the black paper.

Some students found that while it wasn't too hard to find the matches, it could be tricky to line it up correctly onto the corresponding snowflake.

I also used the snowflakes during a whole group lesson, as we talked about how snowflakes form and how every snowflake is different.

Then we played a "find your partner" movement game, where each person had one half of a snowflake and danced with it during a song before finding the friend that had their match.