Literacy & ABCsPreschoolersGrade School12 Comments
Before school starts back up, some sight word practice was needed!
Back to school is just around the corner. In fact, Henry starts tomorrow already. First grade! Wow!
I didn’t realize how fast this summer went by. We really didn’t do anything to prevent the notorious summer slide.
We have been reading at night though. Henry reads a book most every night either to myself or Dad, or even George. I noticed that some sight words have been forgotten… so I knew we’d need to review them before school started back up.
I grabbed his last lists of sight words he passed in Kindergarten and made a game for him to play on the stairs. (We’ve also done a number game on the stairs.)
The goal: to get to the very top!
This is what I did. I wrote his sight words onto sticky notes.
I color coded them, but only for my own purpose, it had nothing to do with the game.
I had four of Henry’s sight word lists that we were going to work on and I wrote each list onto a different colored sticky note. That way I knew the difficulty of the words and what ones were newer to him than others.
I stuck the sticky notes all over the stairs.
At first we did two sight words to practice per step.
I mixed up the colors so that it wasn’t all too easy at the beginning or too hard.
The rules I made for this sight word game on the stairs:
- Henry must read all the words on the current stair he’s on.
- If he gets them all right, he gets to go up one step! Yay!
- If he didn’t know, he’d have to ask for help and go back down a stair and tell me those sight words
- Repeat
I decided to have him back up a step so that he wasn’t just repeating the sight word he asked for help on. This way he’d have to remember it after doing the previous step. And there were many times he didn’t and have to ask for help several times before passing it by.
There were quite a few times he got stuck on a step. It was great practice for him to go down and read the previous ones.
He was very determined to get to the top though!
He even asked to do it again with all the sight words that I wrote out. So we did four sight words per step! It was such a great way to practice sight words. He definitely needed the refresher!
Of course, its not just fun sight word practice…
George saw what Henry was up to and wanted to do it too. Being not even four yet, he wasn’t ready to practice sight words. But letters. Definitely.
I shared another activity for hands on letter practice too.
More fun hands on activities for sight word practice:
- String a Line to Matching Pairs for Sight Words
- Make a Treasure Hunt to Make Sight Words
- Crack the Secret Code for Kids
- Sight Word Jump & Grab
- More ways to learn sight words! Try these 12 hands on learning activities to learn sight words.
- Try some of these 21 Crazy Ways to Practice Spelling Words too!
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Chantal says
What a creative idea. I too, will use this for multiplication facts for my 3rd grader. (Great idea Carol Parker!) And I will use it for my kindergartner for sight words, and eventually my just-turned 3 year old for numbers and letters. I have used some other ideas from your sight, Jamie, and I want to thank you for taking the time to share all this. You are obviously a very creative person who cares about her kids very much. May God bless you and your family mightily!
Jamie Reimer says
Aw thanks Chantal! :) Hope you have fun with these ideas!!
Rebecca B says
I was skeptical when I saw this game. After drilling and reading, I thought it would be more effective to get her into action. This game came to mind. It was a hit! She read most of the words and even told her little sister that she can’t go up the stairs until she reads the word, too! Thank you!
Jamie Reimer says
That is such an awesome comment! Thank you for taking the time to share your experience – I’m so glad you gave it a try!
Carol Parker says
I am going to use this for multiplication facts for my third grader.
Sarah says
I LOVE this idea- what a great way to practice sight words all the way up to more complex vocab for older kids. I will be sharing this via K12’s Pinterest, perfect game for online public school students!
Jamie Reimer says
Thanks for sharing it Sarah!