3 Effective Sight Word Practice Games For Kids

Back in the Spring, Cooper begged to play school one day…we had dropped our short run of structured/forced school time at home for the sake of letting him be little. I am consciously trying not to push academics on him because he is ahead academically for his age.

He said, “Yet’s do weading, Mommy…but wif wuhds not just yetters!” {Forgive my spelling, I just want to remember his sweet voice}  So, I caved and we played sight word practice games for a few minutes…because he was begging…and how does a teacher mom argue with that?

And he loved it!  Here’s a look at the 3 sight word games we played that day…perfect for any kid who is beginning to read.

Disclaimer: PLEASE don’t practice sight words with kids who don’t know their letters and sounds and haven’t begun trying to decode. Pretty PLEASE! 🙂

Fly Swatter Sight Word Games for Review

Cooper’s favorite way to review sight words is the fly swatter sight word practice game.

He loves to play it by himself and he also loves to race Daddy! 🙂  Of course, this is one of those classic sight word games in elementary school with a TON of ideas for reviewing skills, but I love that it’s easy to do at home.  The sight word cards are from my iTeach Tots packet, but this could easily be done with sticky notes and a pen too!

Sight Word Games: Reading Races & Sorting

We also review with reading races:  I flash the sight word cards up and see how fast he can read through all of them….this one always produces giggles galore! 🙂

The third way to review is reading and sorting:  Cooper reads a word and sorts it under the number of letters in the word.  Then, he rereads all of the words under each number!  My kiddo loves this one…and teacher mommy loves that he’s learning sight words and concepts of print (differentiating between letters and words) at the same time!

These are just a few of a million and one sight word practice games, but now they’re our favorites and what Cooper asks for the most!

Introduce New Sight Word

Once we spend 2-3 minutes reviewing sight words {seriously, the length of that video was all we did that day for review!}, I introduce the new sight word.   Right now, we are using these sight word pages from my packet for this.

He seriously is obsessed with these right now!  After we did the first one this summer, he begged to do a new one every single day until we left on vacation!  And after the first few, I was able to get him started and he finished on his own while I finished up a few things around the house.  It takes my almost 4 year old a good 15-20 minutes to to all of it on his own.  #thankyouJesus

We read the new word together and spell it as we build it with something fun…whatever we can find around the house!  We’ve used yarn, beans, pasta, spaghetti noodles.  There are so many fun options!

Then, he reads each word in the Read It! section and circles the sight word we are working on.  He loves using my flair pens too…a boy after my own heart! 🙂

Then, we build it by cutting the letters from the bottom to build the word in a sentence.  We find it by choosing the letters in the correct order to spell our word.  Last, he traces and writes the new word!

Read it in Context

This is the most important part to me as a teacher.  In first grade, I see kids all the time that can pass their first 100 sight word list, but still can’t decode CVC words fluently.  So, while I think sight word practice is crucial for many kids, it means nothing if they can’t transfer that learning into reading.  That’s the end goal!  At home, I practice this with Cooper after we learn his new word.  And it looks very similar to how I practice this with first graders too!

We play fly swatter again with the new word included.  And I call on the new word more than the others to give him more sight word practice with the new word.

Then, we build sentences with our review sight words, including our new sight word.  And he loves to use that stinkin’ fly swatter as his pointer! 😉

I try to mix it up and do several sentences with the new word.  And then we stop when he is done.  Because we all know, it doesn’t do anybody any good to keep going past the “over it” stage! #keepinitreal

I’ll be blogging more about practicing sight words in context with my sight word readers (also included in my iTeach Tots packet) later this month so check back in for more sight word work!

What are your favorite sight word games and activities?