Christmas Visual Discrimination Mats
With the Christmas holiday right around the corner it’s time to have some fun with your preschoolers! These printable Christmas Roll & Cover Mats are an excellent way to practice visual discrimination and pre-reading skills with your preschool.
These elf visual discrimination mats feature the cutest, jolliest, silliest little elves. Preschoolers will have a ball finding just the right elf to cover in these roll and cover games.
Be sure to download your free Christmas visual discrimination mats at the end of this post.
Why Roll and Cover Games?
Roll and cover games are much more than just matching. We use the term visual discrimination to categorize these types of games as the children pay attention to detail and note shapes, colors, differences, and similarities.
Visual discrimination in preschool is a crucial skill that is developed in the early childhood years. It’s important because having solid visual discrimination skills allows us to interpret the world around us. It allows us to see patterns and systems, as well as, develops visual skills needed for reading and writing.
This roll and cover game providex extra practice for young children with visual processing plus it is fun and silly, which makes it a perfect preschool game!
If you are looking for more holiday themed games, our Christmas activity pack is a preschool favorite!
Christmas “I SPY” Books For Preschoolers
These I spy books for Christmas are filled with opportunities to help develop visual discrimination skills and have fun matching and seeking! Preschoolers love to be challenged in fun and visual ways so these Christmas I spy books are sure to be a hit!
- Press, An doner (Author)
- Little Cat Press (Author)
- Players match riddles with pictures, interlocking pairs ensure only the correct matches are possible
- Debot, Larry (Author)
- Publishing, FunnyLuck (Author)
- Art Supplies, Big Dreams (Author)
This post may contain affiliate links, which means that at no cost to you, I may earn a small sum if you click through and make a purchase.
Christmas Visual Discrimination Roll and Cover
This elf roll and cover game is easy to prep and fun to play over and over. It’s a holiday game that can be used to teach matching, vocabulary, colors, and more!
What You Get
Preschoolers will have fun looking at the details in these adorable Christmas elves. This printable includes printable paper die and five different elf roll and cover mats.
They won’t even know they are working on pre-literacy skills with this easy, print and go visual discrimination game.
Materials
- free Christmas roll and cover mats
- Christmas themed counting manipulative (or any other counting manipulative)
The Set Up
First print the Elves Roll and Cover Visual Discrimination Game on heavy cardstock paper. You may wish to laminate it for extra durability. Then assemble to paper dice with clear tape. Last, set up the printed mats and dice with the counting manipulatives of your choice. Now this pre-reading game is ready for play!
How to Use Christmas Roll and Cover Mats
To play this visual discrimination game, preschoolers will roll the die, find the matching elf on the mat and cover it with the manipulative. Encourage your child to play the game until all the elves on the mat are covered. Just keep rolling the dice and covering the corresponding elf.
Alternatively, you can turn this into a roll and cover math game by rolling a dice and then covering the corresponding number of elves. It’s fun to use thematic manipulatives, too, like mini candy canes, pom-poms, or other counting addition manipulatives.
You can even practice addition and subtraction this way, too!
Why Visual Discrimination is Important
Visual discrimination is the ability to identify the similarities and differences between shapes, sizes, patterns, colors and objects.
This is the natural skill that is practiced while playing the ever-popular matching games like Memory or Concentration.
For preschoolers, visual discrimination skills are important pre-reading skills. Preschoolers need solid visual discrimination skills to be able to learn the letters of the alphabet, to identify numbers, and later in elementary school, to be able to quickly read high frequency words.
Preschoolers develop visual discrimination skills by noticing the details, similarities and differences in elves. By developing these skills early, preschoolers will be better able to discriminate letters when it comes to reading.
This printable pairs wonderfully with our other Christmas Alphabet Activities.
Christmas Manipulatives for Learning
Using Christmas manipulatives and toys helps solidify learning and these items definitely help children develop visual discrimination as they make matches and use spatial reasoning to manipulate and place puzzles pieces or sort into categories.
- 4 CHRISTMAS WOODEN PUZZLES DESIGNS: You’ll get a 4-pack of Christmas wooden puzzles in 4 different…
- CHRISTMAS GIFTS: The 4 pack Christmas wooden puzzles are perfect Christmas gifts for toddlers kids…
- LEARNING TOYS: Each Christmas puzzle has 4-7 pieces, easy for toddlers to play. Educational…
- 【Super Value Pack】60 pcs miniature christmas present in 5 different style,12 of each…
- 【Material】Christmas miniature Boxes are made of resin, non-toxic,strong,waterproof,vivid…
- 【Tiny size】mini resin ornaments measure from 0.4 inch to 0.7 inches.Super cute and…
- Package Includes:You will get 30 pieces christmas 3D erasers in 6 styles,5 pieces for each…
- Safe Materials:These Xmas assembled erasers are made of high-quality rubber,non-toxic and…
- Wide Application:Our cute erasers can be taken apart and reassembled.They can be used for christmas…
- 8*bottle brush trees, 42* mini Christmas figurnes ornaments: Santa Claus, Christmas gift boxes,…
- Resin miniature Christmas ornaments are pretty gifts for families, kids, friends, they can decorate…
- Cute miniature bottle brush trees, use them to beautify your table, craft displays, show window,…
Ways to Use Elf Roll and Cover Mats
You can easily add these elf roll and cover cards to your preschool literacy centers, but they’re not limited to just that. Try some of these other ways of using this exact printable.
- Use the elf mats to teach counting. Have your child count all the similar elves on the mat.
- Build vocabulary by asking the children questions, such as “Which elf do you like best?” Encourage your child to use great descriptive words.
- Use the mats to teach prepositional words such as, above, below, next to, etc. For example you could ask, “What elf is next to the one holding a present?”
- You could use to elf mats to reinforce colors by asking your child to point to the elf with a red hat.
- Use the mats to encourage storytelling. Ask your students to make up a story about one of the elves or tell what it might be thinking.
Elf Activities for Preschoolers
If you just haven’t had enough Elf activities, here’s a handful more that are fun and festive and perfect for celebrating this holiday season with your preschoolers.
- Christmas Elf Paper Plate Craft
- Popsicle Stick Elf Craft
- Elf Name Craft
- Elf Letter Recognition Activity
- Preschool Elf Photo Craft
Don’t Forget Elf Picture Books!
The only thing left is to add some well-written, well-illustrated Christmas books. These are some of our favorite elf picture books.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Smith, Mary K. (Author)
- Hardcover Book
- Smith, Nikki Shannon (Author)
- Hardcover Book
- Fletcher, Tom (Author)
Visual Discrimination Games
There are a lot of different ways to teach visual discrimination. Here are some simple ideas:
- Play seek and find games.
- Read “I Spy” and “Where’s Waldo” type books.
- Go on scavenger hunts.
- Play matching games, even with everyday objects like cups, socks, or crayons.
- Practice sorting objects: crayons, candies, toys, laundry, etc.
Or grab these free printable visual discrimination games for use all year long!
- Monster Visual Discrimination Game
- Ladybug Early Literacy Cards
- Fall Visual Discrimination Activity
- Easter Egg Visual Discrimination Match
Get your Free Elf Visual Discrimination Mats Here
Think you need these free roll and cover mats in your preschool Christmas lesson plans? Grab your free copy by filling out the form below.
More Free Christmas Activities for Preschoolers
Here are some more fun Christmas printables for you! We have counting games perfect for math centers, Christmas tree games great for alphabet activities, and more visual discrimination activities and dice games.
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
