Sight Word Practice Ideas

Looking for sight word practice ideas? Explore these tried and true sight word practice ideas!

Check out the difference between “sight words” and “high frequency words” below.

What are sight words?

Sight words are commonly used words that do not follow basic phonics principles and therefore cannot easily be “sounded out”. Usually these words are easier learned by remembering what they look like first and then working on memorizing spelling next.

Sight words are words like: eight, again, could, laugh, and so on.

What are High Frequency words?

Sometimes people refer to High Frequency words as Sight words, but there is a difference between them. While sight words are learned because they aren’t able to be phonetically “sounded out”, many high frequency words can be sounded out.

High frequency words are words like: the, as, at, her.

So why learn to memorize high frequency words as you would a sight word? High frequency words are used so often that memorizing them helps the child become fluent and smooth readers. Instead of having to sound out “the” every time they approach the word, they can simply know the word by sight and move on.

I like to make practicing sight words fun and engaging so that the child enjoys learning. Here are some fun ideas to make practicing sight words as painless as possible.

Hop on Top

This activity is very flexible to what you have on hand!

Write the sight word on something like a sticky note or note card, make a path through the room, spacing the words close enough that a child can hop from one to the next.

Before the child can hop to the next card, they must first read the sight word.

*This activity can also be done outside on the sidewalk using chalk.

Quick Tip:

Most children find this activity fun as a stand alone activity, but if you have a very resistant learner, try placing a reward at the end of the path that will help incentivize your child. I like to use a handful of cereal or fresh fruit as the reward.

Scavenger Hunt

Place sight words around the room or house. The child must find all the sight words and match them on the board or sheet of paper.

You can play this twice and hide them a little harder the second time around. My children love when I tell them that I’m going to “stump them”!

You can use sticky notes or note cards or anything you have on hand.

Quick Tip:

For a little harder challenge, place multiple sticky notes with the same word. This time the child must only find a specific word on the board. This causes the child to have to read each sticky note multiple times while they hunt for the specific one. For example the child might look for the “heavy” note and have to read several others before they find it.

Watercolor Reveal

Using a white crayon, write the sight words on a white piece of paper. The child will then use watercolors to reveal the words!

Even my 8 year still loves this one, she even thinks it’s fun to write the words out herself and then reveal them – double practice!

Nature Spelling

Using materials in nature encourage the child to spell out the words. It is totally okay if they have a list of the sight words handy for reference.

Material ideas: pebbles, sticks, leaves, or drawing in the dirt/sand.

Glitter Glue Tracing

Write sight words on a large piece of paper. Allow the child to trace the words using glitter glue!

Quick Tip:

Have the child start at the top of the paper to avoid making a mess of the glue, or you can use smaller pieces of paper with 1 word per piece.

Sidewalk chalk Spray/Splat

Using sidewalk chalk, write the words on the sidewalk, (you can write them multiple times). Give the child some form of water to erase the words after they read them.

Water ideas: Spray bottle, water balloons, paintbrush and container of water.

Don’t have sidewalk? Write on a fence or side of a building instead!

Sort

Write each sight word on multiple sticky notes (3-4 sticky notes per each site word). Do this for all sight words being practiced. Then, mix the sticky notes up and have the child sort them out, don’t forget to have the child say the word aloud as they sort.

Alternatively, you can do this with note cards for a different effect, however, the concept is the same.

Word Search

Create a word search using a word search builder website. This is the one I used for this word search seen above –> WordSearchGenerator

Go Fish

On note cards, (I like to cut mine in half), write each word. Do this so that there are two separate cards of the each word in the deck.

Play “go-fish”

Memory Game

On note cards, (I like to cut mine in half), write each word. Do this so that there are two separate cards of the same word in the deck.

Play Memory: Take turns flipping two cards over at a time, if they are a match you win the cards. If they do not match, flip them back over and the next player goes. Whoever wins the most matches wins the game.

Balloon Pop

Fill balloons with air or water. Write sight words on the balloons. Allow the child to pop them after they read the word on the balloon. They can use something sharp or throw the water balloons.

(extra fun if you let them throw them at you!)

Cup Bop

You could do so many different things with these cups. One of our favorites is to write sight words on them, line them up (spaced a few inches apart), and have the child toss a ball at them. The cup(s) that the child knocks over has to be read aloud before they can throw the ball again.

Unscramble

Another fun worksheet that helps the child learn the spelling of the sight words. You can choose to show the word bank or hide it. Here is where I made this sight word scamble worksheet for free

–> SuperTeacherWorksheets