Many school and home school curriculums used in kindergarten and first grade target learning sight words as a core learning goal. Sight words are words commonly used in books and written language that have been identified by traditional and home school curriculums as core components of a reading and spelling program.
Different educational and home school curriculums refer to sight words by a variety of names. Your school or home school curriculum may call sight words ‘popcorn words’, ‘core words’, or something similar. No matter how they are referred to, sight words are those that are the most recognizable to children and are learned most easily. Learning to read and write sight words gives young readers and writers a basic, reliable vocabulary, a sense of accomplishment, and a series of words that can be used to form new words as a child’s word recognition and vocabulary grows.
Any given sight word list can vary from one curriculum to another, but a basic list will start with simple two to three letter words such as ‘a’, ‘I’, ‘we’. ‘and’, ‘me’, ‘you’ and so on. Ask your child’s teacher or refer to your home school curriculum guide for the list of words you and your children should focus on. The following activities will provide fun ways to practice the sight words provided by your school or home school curriculum.
Flash Cards
Flash cards are an age old tool for learning and memorizing, letters, numbers, and words because they are easy to make and use. As such, they are an effective tool for learning sight words, whether for practice to enhance your child’s school learning or incorporated into a home school curriculum.
Flash cards can be used in the traditional sense of running through the stack, reading and reciting a list of sight words, but they can be used to play fun games as well. Make two stacks of sight word flash cards and use them to play a memory game. If you are very ambitious, make an entire deck of fifty two sight word flash cards and play a traditional card game such as go fish.
Give specific sight word flash cards one at a time to your child and ask them to find the word in a book, or circle the word everywhere it appears on a newspaper or magazine page (this can be done without the cards – it’s a good way to practice sight words on the go).
Bean Bag Toss
Make a game board with your child’s school or home school curriculum sight words and play a fun game of bean nag toss while children practice their sight words. For each sight word your child lands on, ask them to read the word to you. You can instruct children to aim for certain words, or use the game board along with flash cards and have children match flash cards and sight words on the board.
Bowling For Sight Words
Active learning games make learning fun and hold children’s interest longer. Make a fun, active sight word game to use with your children for fun, educational family time and an active home school curriculum activity that can be adapted to a variety of home school learning areas.
Purchase an inexpensive plastic bowling game at any department store (odds are good you already own at least one). Use a permanent marker to write sight words onto the bowling pins. As children bowl and knock down pins, ask them to read the sight words that were toppled (or those left standing). Like the flashcard memory game, you can ask children to aim for certain words by lining the pins up side by side as a way to mix up the fun.
Magnetic Letters
Simple, magnetic letters like those often placed on kitchen refrigerators are simple, inexpensive learning tools for children practicing sight words at home or as part of a home school reading curriculum. Magnetic letters are versatile and can be used for number of fun learning games and activities.
Ask your children and home school students to construct sight words using magnetic letters, with or without the aid of an example such as a flash card. Placing magnetic letters on your refrigerator, a metal door, or clothes dryer will allow you to practice spelling sight words as you get a few household chores done. To use in a home school classroom or for a learning game that can travel, store magnetic letters and a small cookie sheet in a canvas bag, easily pulled out when it is time to practice sight words. Also, some easels you may be using in a home school classroom may have a metal board that will support magnetic letters.
There are many fun ways to practice reading sight words at home and as part of a fun and interesting home school curriculum. The activities listed here are a good start, and for more fun activities, read more on AssociatedContent.com.
Reference:
- www.associatedcontent.com/user/22305/mary_ward.html more learning activities on my CP page
