More Fun With Sight Words: Activities for Parents and Home Schoolers

Continued exposure and practice with reading sight words will help your children and home school students gain a firm understanding and recognition of these most often read and written vocabulary words. Providing a variety of new sight word activities keeps children and home schoolers interested and eager to learn.

Following are more suggestions to inexpensively and easily practice sight words as an enrichment to a traditional school curriculum, or as part of a well rounded home school curriculum.

Dry Erase Board
A small, inexpensive dry erase board is a good, versatile investment for use in practicing sight words (and more) at home. It is likely you are already using dry erase boards in your home school curriculum.

Dry erase boards can be used in many ways for learning sight words. Write sentences on the board, leaving out a sight word and have home school children fill in the missing word. Dictate sight words to children and have them write the word on the dry erase board. Write three or four letters on the top of the board and ask home school children to make as many sight words with them as they can. Use a light colored permanent marker to write sight words on a dry erase board that your child or home school students can trace, practicing reading and writing the words.

Write and Wipe Cards
An alternative to permanently marking a dry erase board for word tracing is to make a set of cards that at home or home school that can be written on with dry erase (or washable) markers, wiped away and used again.

Write individual sight words on cardstock, then cut apart and laminate with clear laminating paper. Laminated cards can be used over and over in your home school program. Sentences with missing sight words or words with missing letters can be made using this method too.

Word Finder
A simple word finder can be made using cardstock or index cards. Cut a rectangle in the center of the card (you may or may not choose to laminate them, but they will last longer for repeated use in a home school curriculum if you do). Additionally, you may find it easier to make word finders with different size rectangles to fit home school texts of varying sizes. To spark children's interest, allow them to individually decorate their word finder cards.

With word finder cards completed, ask children to place them over the page of a favorite book and scan for designated sight words. Singling words out of text using a word finder helps child to focus only on that word. This method is also useful for home school children who are easily distracted by surrounding words and lines of text when reading. A word finder, or one large enough to focus on just a section of text makes reading tasks less confusing and generally easier.

Letter Tiles
Make alphabet letter tiles by writing letters on small cardstock squares. You will find many uses for letter tiles in your home school curriculum.

Ask children to form sight words with letter tiles. Mix three or four letter tiles and ask children what word the letters spell when rearranged. Have children spell as many sight words as possible with the scrambled letter tiles. Spell out sight words, but omit a letter of the sight word. Have your children and home school students fill in the missing letter.

Play a game of sight word hide and seek by placing enough letters in a plastic Easter egg to spell a sight word. This is a fun way to have a home school scavenger hunt. Send children searching for the eggs and ask them to spell a sight word with the letter tiles when they are found.

Scrabble
Purchasing a Scrabble-type word game gives you a tool that you can use over and over practicing sight words with your children. You will find a variety of ways to use the game and letter tiles in your home school curriculum.

Playing the traditional game with older children is a fun literary activity. With younger children and for practicing sight words, pull out the tiles that can be used to spell sight words and play a simplified version, or have children build sight words with the tiles. An alternative version is for you to arrange various sight words around the game board and fill in the rest of the board with random letters. Ask your child or home school students to search and discover the sight words spelled out on the board. Another way to use the word game is to have children spell out sight words, then help them add letter tiles to build longer, more advanced vocabulary.

Having a variety of games and activities for use with your children or in your home school curriculum will ensure that children remain interested in learning sight words, building a solid vocabulary foundation for reading success. You can learn more ways to incorporate fun sight word activities into parent-child and home school curriculums at AssociatedContent.com.