Game playing and hands-on sight word learning activities, like those listed below, are super engaging for children, making sight word learning much more fun than learning by simply reciting the word from flashcards or a paper based list – simply use the words that a child is currently learning with the activity. How do you learn sight words in a fun way? The trick to getting your child to want to practice their sight words is by making it fun and appealing. In order for these words to be recalled automatically, children need to be exposed to them frequently and have multiple opportunities to read and write the words. Typically, when children begin to learn to identify sight words they start with small subsets or lists of 5-10 new words at a time, moving on to a new set of words once each previous set is mastered. Play begins as one player pulls a triangle out of the bag without looking. The yellow triangles are the cheese and the orange ones are the stinky cheese. Children who have to stop frequently as they struggle to recall, or to phonetically decode, a word are more likely to lose track of the meaning of what they have already read as they focus on the individual word that they are struggling with. This game is super fun and engaging for students You play by setting out sight word cards that have rainbows on them. Write a sight word on each of the yellow triangles. Sight words are important as being able to automatically recall a word assist children to read more fluently, and fluency assists children to understand, or comprehend, the text they are reading. For example, consider the word ‘was.’ An attempt to sound it out – w-a-s – would more likely sound like a word that rhymes with gas. You may be wondering, what are sight words and how important are they? Sight words are words that fluent readers can identify ‘on sight.’ They are words that appear frequently in written text and are often irregularly spelled and therefore difficult for early or beginning readers to sound out phonetically. Rolling out some play dough and writing a sight word with a toothpick. Keep writing the word, adding one more letter each time. Then, re-write the first letter, and add on the second letter in the next row. To Pyramid Write your sight word, simply write the first letter of the word onto the paper. My two favourites are: Forming each of the sight words, letter by letter, with rolled up play dough. Pryamid Writing is a word work activity that I teach early on in the school year. There is a multitude of fun sight word activities you can do with playdough.

One of these important moving parts is learning to identify sight words at a glance, or on ‘first sight.’ This activity is great as a hands-on sight word activity.

Some children take to reading like fish to water, for others it is a slower process with many moving parts to master. Inside: A big list of engaging sight word activities – includes games, printables and plenty of hands-on fun.

Fun sight word activities