Teach Your Child To Read

Here is a list of games and activities to play for learning sight words and how they can be used to help you to teach your child to read. These resources are especially useful for homeschoolers wishing to use their knowledge and apply it to their child’s education needs but they can be equally useful for anybody just wishing to help develop their child’s reading skills

• Make cards with the sight words on or buy your sight words cards here, with two of each word and play Snap. Start with just two or three unfamiliar words and add to them when these are memorised. Remember to say the word out loud when you put the card down. Starfall has a good online sight word memo game here.

• Play Hangman using sight words, pointing out how many letters are in the word. You can also look at if it has tall or short letters in it, instead of just drawing a line for each letter, draw a box which needs to be the correct size for the letter (a tall box for l, t, d etc.; a box which descends downwards for g, j etc., a small box for a, c, e etc.)

• Play the Pirate and Treasure game: make paper or card ‘gold coins’ with the words on and put them in a special ‘treasure chest’. Take one coin out and put it so the child can see it. If they read and say the word out loud correctly, they win the coin and add it to their pile of treasure. If not, the parent or person playing the game wins the coin back, puts it back into the treasure chest (saying the word aloud) and chooses another coin to put on the table.

• Put large cards with the words written on them on the floor. You have to throw a pebble or counter or whatever you can find to land on one of the words. If it lands on one you can read the word out loud and win the card. Take it in turns and see who wins the most cards.

• Make sight words bingo or lotto games.

• Write sight words on large pieces of pasta such as macaroni with a permanent marker. Put them in a pan and your child has to scoop one out with a spoon and read it. If they can, they put it in their dish and if not they put it back in the pan for another time.

• Print out or write the sight words in a large font and in outline. The children can make play dough or plasticine ‘snakes’ to go over the letters to write the word in dough.

• Make a sheet with various shapes and a sight word written inside each shape. Make sure you write each sight word more than once. The children have to colour the matching sight words the same colour.

Related Lists

Your Dictionary Links To Sight Words Lists

Related Word Lists

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