How to Teach Sight Words
How to Teach Sight Words the Fun Way
Are you looking to start teaching sight words in a fun and engaging way? Coronavirus has led to me becoming a reluctant homeschool mom. I never intended to homeschool kindergarten and yet here I am. When it came time to start working on sight words I looked on Teachers Pay Teachers to try and find something already made for me. I found some wonderful content, but it just wasn’t my style, there was either A LOT of prep or A LOT of busy worksheets. So here I am creating my own activities yet again.
If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend you read my post on when you should be teaching sight words.
Here are a handful of low prep ideas for learning sight words in a fun way.
Low Prep Sight Word Activities
Sight Word Mazes -Write 4-5 sight words on Post-Its. Make 4 Post-Its for each word. Place one set of Post-Its on the left side of the paper and a second set on the right side of the paper, they do not need to line up with their matching counterpart. Draw lines to connect the matching sight words and add place the additional corresponding Post-Its to the line. Invite your child to read the sight word on the left, follow the path to the word on the right, and read each word out loud as they reach each Post-It.
Sight Word Post-It Sort – Write sight words on Post-It Notes, you will want 3-4 of each word. Write each word on a chalkboard, whiteboard, or big piece of paper. Sort each Post-It based on the sight word.
Sight Word Magnetic Tiles – Write sight words on Post-It Notes with one letter on each Post-It. Place each Post-It on a magnetic tile. Use the magnetic tiles to spell each sight word.
Sight Word Connect Four – Write sight words on dot stickers. Place the dot stickers on the Connect Four pieces. Play Connect Four like normal, however in order to make your move you must read the sight word on the piece.
Sight Word Go Fish – Write sight words on dot stickers, you will need two of each word. Place the dot stickers on playing cards. Play Go Fish like normal, except instead of asking for a number, you ask for a sight word.
Sight Word Play Dough – Roll and mold play dough to form letters and spell sight words. You may want to lay out flashcards to use as a reference while your kids are spelling words.
Sight Word Stamping – Using letter stamps, spell your sight words on a piece of paper or into play dough
Sight Word Tic Tac Toe – Draw a Tic Tac Toe board and write a sight word in each space. Play tic tac toe like normal, except in order to make your move you have to read the sight word in that space.
Sight Word Seek and Find – Write 5-6 sight words on a piece of paper. Repeat each word multiple times; they can go vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. Create a key and assign each word a color. Invite your kids to color or circle each word in the assigned color based on the key.
Sight Word Word Search – Create a giant word search on a piece of butcher paper. The hidden words in the search will be the sight words you are working on.
Sight Word Graphing – Using a die that you can customize, write sight words on each side of the die. Create a graph with the corresponding sight words. Roll the die and mark the graph based on the word you roll.
Sight Word Roll and Read – Create a key on a piece of paper, each side of the die represents a sight word. Roll a die, find the number on the key, and read the corresponding word.
Tips on How to Teach Sight Words
A few tips for learning sight words:
- Introduce 4 words at a time. Four words are enough to keep things interesting, but not too many to be overwhelming.
- Require your child to verbally say each word each time. While many kids can sort words visually, we want them to learn what it says. Connecting the auditory and visual is important.
