Exciting Games for Teaching Sight Words

by Angie Shiflett

Many homeschooling families face the challenge of teaching their child to read. While this is a very exciting time in both the life of the child and the parent, it can present some obstacles. If you are reading this article, you have probably already passed the stage of teaching your child the alphabet and how to recognize letters. Chances are, your child can even write a few letters – possibly even their name. Now, it is time to move on to the ever-popular sight words. You will learn important information regarding these words, and how to implement exciting games when teaching sight words. Whether or not you are a homeschool parent these games can be a great way to help your child learn to read.

One of the first things that you can do when it comes to exciting games that you can implement when teaching sight words to your homeschooler is to teach word families in fun interactive play. There are many methods that you use to do this, and make the learning experience fun and exciting for your homeschooler. The first method is to gather up a bunch of craft sticks, or Popsicle sticks. Start with a simple sight word, such as “all”. Get a marker and write the word “all” on the stick. Then, gather up other sticks and write the words that are in the same word “family”, such as “ball”, “call”, “fall”, “hall”, “mall”, “small”, and “tall”. You have now created a word family.

You should make at least three different word families by writing the words that belong to each on the wooden craft sticks. You can use the family that include “be”, “he”, “me”, “we”, and even the one that ends in –at, like “bat”, “cat”, “fat”, “mat”, “sat”, and so on. Once you have the different families of words, you may want to allow your child to draw little faces on the wooden craft sticks to make it more realistic. Then, you should designate an area where you can hide the sticks. You can set out simple bowls with an index inside that specifies the word family. It could say “The –all Family”, and so on. Allow your child to search for the word figures. When they find one, have them read the word, and decide what family that word is a part of.

The next fun and exciting game that can be used in order to teach sight words to your homeschooler is based on the ever-popular “memory” game. Simply write basic sight words on dark colored index cards, ensuring that you do two a piece. Place the cards face down, and play “memory” by allowing your child to match words to other words that are the same. If you want to implement more of a challenge, make one sight word card with another sight word that is in the same word family. Instead of matching the sight word to the same sight word, they must match the sight word to another sight word in the same family. This makes for hours of entertainment and learning!

This is Kevin from More4kids here interjecting a couple thoughts. I just wanted to add that there are many creative and exciting games that can be implemented when teaching your homeschooler or child sight words. One game I enjoy playing with my son now is to create very small squares with words on them. We create one pile for the common sight words from the list above, and another pile with some adjectives such as "blue", "big", and another with some common nouns such as "mother", "father", "dog", "cat", "house" etc. Then we play a game to see how many sentences he can create, no matter how silly they may be such as "I see a green dog" for example, or something simple like "My House is big".  When my son starts to get boared with this game we just add more words. The key is to make learning fun since kids learn best when they don't realize they are learning, umm and for that matter adults too! Now back to Angies article…

You must ensure that the game that you select is appropriate to the age level and understanding of your child. You must also ensure that you are positive and energetic when it comes to teaching your young child to read. Becoming frustrated will only hinder the learning experience for the child. There are a number of resources on the internet that will allow you to work closely with your child to ensure that they are learning the things that they need to read, please feel free to browse the following website for more educational ideas for your homeschooler:

http://www.fcboe.org/schoolhp/shes/sight_words.htm

http://www.gamequarium.com/readquarium/sightgames.html

http://www.mrcpl.org/literacy/lessons/sight/index.html

Remember, kids learn best when they don't realize they are learning. So have FUN!!!

Biography:
Angie Shiflett is a content specialist that focuses on writing on an assortment of topics. Currently, her passion is homeschooling. She has been homeschooling her children through The Connections Academy for two years now. Both her and her husband are able to remain at home with their children in order to educate them. They place a high emphasis on family, and dedication to the importance of a proper education.

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