Learning "Sight" Words

I started out teaching Lucy her sight words by just writing them on index cards and showing her the card while saying the word, the only way I had seen it taught.  I even made a cute little mini-binder to put the index cards in.  You know, trying to appeal to her love for all things pretty.

Cute as it was this was just not working.  It was boring and she kept struggling with the same words so I asked some fellow hs moms for help and one shared with me a Scholastic book called 40 Sensational Sight Word Games.  I continue to be amazed at how many teaching resources there are out there.  Thank goodness for other moms who are willing to share what has and hasn't worked for them.  I can't say enough how helpful it's been to be a part of a homeschool coop and keep up with message boards, online communities and just stay connected with other Moms who are doing the same thing.

Back to sight words... this book has some seriously cool games to teach sight words.  I immediately spotted one or two that I knew would be right up Lucy's alley.  We got busy creating a SIGHT WORDS GARDEN.  I let her cut the leaves, finger paint the grass, make a sun, color the flowers and just about anything she wanted to do for it.  Finally, I covered it with contact paper for durability and put velcro squares at the top end of each flower stem.

The flowers have the sight words on it and can be taken out and put back up using the velcro.  Notice how there are different kinds of flowers:  tulips, roses and irises.  We make more flowers as we learn more sight words and we can arrange similar groups together.  For example: the, they, them, this, that can all be roses since they all start with "th".

We play SO MANY games with this garden!

We call her favorite game the Mother's Day Bouquet game.  We pretend Mother's Day is getting close and she wants to put together a bouquet of flowers for her Mom :)  Before she can "cut" (take the flower out) from the garden she has to say the word that's on it.

Then she places the flower inside the bouquet envelope that's located on our bulletin board.  We place the reverse of this game planting the flowers back in the garden and saying the words before she puts them back in.

It's simple and not really that different from just saying the word from an index card but putting it in a context that she enjoys makes a world of difference for her. 

Moms of Boys:  The book also has race card games, train and construction and something for about any line of interest a child could have.  I look forward to finding out what will tickle my other two kids' senses when it comes to learning sight words :)