I Spy Sensory Bag for Sight Words & Letters

Make this I Spy sensory bag for all types of learning, including sight words and letters like we did, but don’t stop there!

Sight words have been the talk here in this house this past week or so.

Henry was stuck on the same list for over a month, only to realize that it was because he wasn’t doing his ‘job’ at school by remembering to turn in his list to his teacher to be ‘tested’ when he thought he knew them well enough to pass. So, now we’ve been practicing a bunch, and reminding him a bunch to turn them in to his teacher.

I don’t think he’s behind at all, the teacher hasn’t said anything like that to me, so it’s really no big deal. I just want to make sure he’s keeping up because he’s able to, not because of forgetting a routine that’s in place.

Practicing sight words are pretty easy here. Henry’s usually pretty excited about doing it and reading the list back to me usually satisfies him. But we do throw in a sight word activity here and there for some fun.

More ways to learn sight words! Try these 12 hands on learning activities to learn sight words.

Recently, I came across a very cool sensory bag idea on Playdough to Plato to practice sight words.

I quickly made two of these I Spy sensory bags for Henry and George. A sight word one for Henry and a letter one for George. We did them slightly different than Playdough to Plato, so make sure you check out what she used for hers.

On a piece of scrapbook paper, I wrote down Henry’s sight words from the last a couple of lists that he’s working on. All over, up and down, sideways, very random.

And did the same with capital letters for George.

I then cut it to fit into a gallon baggy and slipped it inside. Be smarter than me, and cut your paper first and then right the sight words on it.

For our sensory, we used dry white rice. I think oatmeal would be a fun one too! I poured in a bunch of rice in the baggies, on top of the papers, and then sealed them up.

The boys then began their hunt for sight words and letters.

For Henry, I had him write down the sight words as he found them.

I made a list of the letters for George and as he found them, he’d mark the letters he found.

We’ve also done this with dish soap in the bag instead of rice. A couple years later… here’s Louis searching for letters:

It was hard for them at first to move the rice around, they were struggling and couldn’t find any of the letters or words.

Then one of them picked up the bag to show me something, and all the rice dumped to the side and they realized they could find a whole bunch at one time then.

So they did that over and over, tipping the rice from side to side to find all the words and letters.

Hey, it still got them searching for them and helped them learn, right?

Here are 48 ways to explore with sensory bags!

Other learning ideas for this I Spy Sensory Bag:

• Numbers
• Lowercase letters
• Shapes
• Rhyming words (find two that rhyme)
• Letters in their name
• Addition problems (and then solve them) or vice versa, give them addition problems and they have to search to find the answer
• Basic pictures (house, cat, flag) for them to name