Henry works on sight words and George works on letters. I’ve done this so many times with Henry and George. So, if you have a preschooler that wants to play along, just switch out the sight words for letters of the alphabet. Check out the game on the stairs, or the magic paint. These are twelve activities that we’ve done to learn sight words, with a few from around the web as well.Ī wonderful bonus to any of these activities is that they can usually be adapted to letters. That’s the goal.Īll throughout kindergarten we’ve been doing tons of sight word activities to practice, practice, practice. Seeing the sight word and knowing what it is right off the bat. Not about the spelling or sounding them out.

Sight words are all about memorization and recognition. That means we get to do all these fun sight word activities to help him learn them! If your child is reading-ready, practicing sight words on a daily basis will enhance their reading fluency, phonemic awareness, and overall confidence.Henry is a first grader this year and came home with a letter about their expectations for learning sight words. Like any skill, a mix of repetition and learning new concepts is essential. For pre-K or “pre-readers,” Readsters recommends these preschool reading words: …Just to list a few! Note that these lists can be modified and expanded based on the needs and skills of the child. That said, some of the best kindergarten sight words include: These lists vary among reading experts and can also be modified to include high-frequency words in any decodables you plan to read with your child. At this point, you can craft or modify a list of the best sight words. They’ll be able to count syllables in words, rhyme, and identify the first and last sounds in a word. With time and exposure to more books, young readers will develop their phonemic awareness. In the realm of sight words, patience is key: your kindergartner may be more advanced than your struggling first grader, and this is simply part of the reading journey - not a determinant of either child’s long-term reading success. A preschooler who can blend simple sounds - /c/ /a/ /t/ to produce the word “cat,” for example - may be more prepared to memorize a list of preschool reading words than a kindergartner who is not as advanced in their phonemic awareness. Before presenting a list of words to your preschooler or kindergartner, they should have a solid foundation in phonemic awareness: the ability to sound out the individual sounds in words. Learning to read is not simply a matter of practicing sight words. Alphabet knowledge: ability to recognize and sound out most letters.Ability to listen to a story, answer questions about it, and retell a familiar narrative in their own words.Holding books and turning their pages correctly, from left to right.

Think “the,” “a,”, “I,” “to,” and other words that aren’t easily sounded out but appear regularly in decodable books.īefore practicing sight words with preschoolers, they should be showing signs of reading readiness: That said, most sight words are high frequency words that appear regularly in many children’s books. An early reader’s set of sight words will vary slightly, as every preschooler or kindergartner is exposed to different books and varied sets of sight words. Sight words can be recognized instantly: they’re simple words that a reader can “see” and pronounce without sounding out or guessing.

Practice sight words preschool