Tips for Teaching Sight Words

9/21/2021

It’s important for preschool-aged children to learn sight words. You may be wondering what sight words actually are and what makes them different from other words. In this post we’ll cover what they are, why it’s important for preschool children to learn them, and we’ll even give you fun tips and techniques for teaching them!

What are sight words?

Sight words are simply words that are immediately recognized and require no decoding of any kind. These words are seen frequently in written text. As a matter of fact, sight words make up about half of all written text! Examples are: a, and, can, is, it, and the, to name a few.

Teacher Tip: Start younger preschoolers with only a few words at time!

Why is it important for young children to learn sight words?

When children learn to recognize sight words they become more fluent readers. Think of how many times you come across the word “the” on a page, in a text message, etc. Your brain hardly has to spend any effort at all on that word and other sight words. When a child learns to immediately recognize a sight word, reading becomes much more automatic and much less of a task.

How do I teach sight words?

Here’s the fun part! There are so many ways to make learning sight words enjoyable for children. A multi-sensory approach works best, because when children use more than one of their senses to learn they tend to retain more of the information. This is because everyone learns differently, and using multiple senses will cover many different modes of learning!

Incorporate Movement

Apple Sight Word Activities

Incorporating movement is a great way to get kids excited about learning. Here are a few ideas to try.

Get those bodies moving! Take your sight word activities outside. Create a gross motor relay, or music walk type activity like the above using our Apple Sight Word Set.
Trace sight words in the air by “skywriting” them as you spell the words out loud.
Preschool children love seek and find games! Play a hide and seek game by hiding sight word flash cards around the house. They can hunt for the cards and say the words when they find them.
Try a fun color word scavenger hunt! list for finding different colors around the house. Kids will love searching for different colors and then marking them off on the recording sheet as they find them. They’ll learn to read color words as they go!

Sensory Bins

Sensory Bins are super easy to create, they’re fun, and they get those senses engaged! They also have a bit of that “hide and seek” aspect to them. Grab a bin, fill it with anything from colored rice to gel beads, and try these fun Sight Word Printable Scenes !

Print the set of your choice, laminate for durability (optional), and cut out the sight word cards.
Hide the sight word cards in the sensory bin and as children find them, they’ll match them to the sight words on the mat.
Keep it interesting by changing out the material in the sensory bin, printing different scenes and cards, or even have children spell the words once they match them!

Pond Scene from our Sight Word Scenes Set

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor development is so important in preschool-aged children, so why not have them learn sight words while building strong fine motor skills? Here are some ideas to try.

Print the set of your choice from the Sight Word Scenes set, laminate for durability (optional), and cut out the sight word cards. (You can even have children cut out the sight word cards themselves for extra fine motor practice!)
Instead of using the matching cards, have children roll balls of Play Doh to cover the words on each of these scenes. You can call out the words you want them to identify, and they can place the Play Doh on them. Have fun with the colors! Use red for apples, orange for pumpkins, etc.
Use play dough combined with stamps to spell out sight words like we did below using our Cookies for Santa sight word set.
Using the words from the game, build them with letter tiles or magnetic letters.

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Rhyming Words Match Up Mats

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