So imagine that your kindergarten age child comes home upset that they are not winning the popcorn sight word game that is being played in kindergarten. Imagine that you are given a list of kindergarten sight words to make into cards to review each week. Imagine that your child is really bored when you pull out these index cards or worse, cries when you pull them out. Imagine that despite your efforts, you child is getting an “N” for needs improvement in recognizing sight words. What would you do?
One family hired me, a certified teacher with many years of teaching experience, to tutor their daughter. We’ve turned stressful into fun and you can too.
First, think outside of “the box” of index cards.
A stack of index cards can be daunting at any age, much less for a five year old. We knew we had some catching up to do and then needed to add three new words each week, so how could we introduce these words and avoid the boredom and the stress?
We made it fun. It was almost Valentines’ Day so we cut out a pile of hearts. I wrote the sight words, no more than three per session, and my student traced them with a marker and decorated the edges with glitter dots, stickers and so on. These sight word cards were no longer stressful index cards. Now they were decorations. We taped them to the frame of a plant stand in her home so she could stand and review them anytime with members of her family without the flipping through the cards routine.
It’s not always Valentine’s Day and hearts won’t appeal to all young learners. We later switched it up to be Easter eggs but they could be baseballs, ballet shoes, racecars, pizzas or horses. The point is matching a child’s interest to make the cards fun and fresh instead of stale. If you’re not crediting yourself with being crafty, any education store will have small notepads in the shape of just about anything you can imagine from dinosaurs, to basketballs, to pumpkins.
Second, let them trace to start the pace.
If they are simply shown words that we’ve written on cards, even if they are cute cards, they are still foreign. Always write in pencil and allow them to trace the words in marker. Have them say the letters while they trace them. They will be working on writing too. Have them read the word after they “write” it. Now it is their very own word card instead of a random pressure.
Third, turn it into a craft and a decoration instead of a pain.
Which ever shape you choose, there will be a way a child craft it the sight word card into a decoration. If you use a dinosaur shaped sight word card, they can add a wiggle craft eye to bring it to life. If it is a shamrock, they can add gold glitter glue to the edges. If it is a pumpkin, they can add a stem hanger from a piece of pipe cleaner. The point is to let them turn it into a craft that they want to hang in their home and will happy to visit and read and show off.
There is a lot of pressure for young learners to recognize sight words and some will eagerly do so from index cards, but many will find that process to boring or stressful. Choosing a fun shape, letting them trace the word and decorate the card can make sight word practice more fun for everyone.
