Sight words help children gain confidence as they read, and increase a child’s reading speed and comprehension.  

Kids learn better when they’re having fun, which is why we love adding different games for kids into our homeschool routine.  

Help get your child excited about reading with these fun ways to practice sight words at home. 

Sight word games are a fun way to work on early reading skills.  

If you have an early reader, chances are they are learning math facts as well.  Check out these fun ways to practice math facts for more learning games you can do at home.  

Fun Ways to Practice Sight Words

Dr. Seuss Sight Word Activities — Mix reading practice with activities inspired by a favorite author of early readers.  

Read to the Top —  Get your child up and moving with this super simple idea that takes just minutes to set up. 

Very Hungry Caterpillar Printable Game — Edit this colorful game with your child’s words for a printable, low-prep game featuring one of the most loved early reading books.  

Reading Farm — Mix up some cloud dough and add toy tractors sight words to create a small world setting that encourages reading.  

Blast Off Sight Word Game —  Outer space fans will be thrilled with this reading game for kids you can make at home.

Dr. Seuss Inspired Reading Game —  Dr. Seuss books are always popular with early readers.  This game, inspired by his books, is easy to make and fun to play.  

Drive to the Sight Word —  Get your little vehicle enthusiast excited about reading with this simple idea. 

Cup Crash — Mix sight words with all the fun of knocking things over in this simple sight word activity.  

Bottle Cap Sight Word Game —   Recycle plastic bottle caps for this fun DIY sight word game.  Start with just a few bottle caps and continue to add words to your collection as your child progresses.  

Sight Word Black Out — Print out one or all 30 pre-made game boards to practice the most common sight words.  

Sight Word Tic-Tac-Toe —  Young children love playing tic-tac-toe.  Turn that favorite game into a sight word activity.  

Sight Word Sensory Bin — Mix sensory play and learning with this simple activity.  Early readers will have fun building words with plastic letters they find in the colorful bin.  

Sidewalk Chalk Reading Game —  Take the learning outside!  Grab the sidewalk chalk and practice those words in the driveway or on the sidewalk. 

Sight Word Bang — Discover how you can use noise makers in a simple sight word game outside. 

Activity Mats — Kids will have fun bending play dough into the letters to form the words on these high frequency word mats. 

Sight Word Smack —  Get your child up and moving while they work on their reading skills.   

Sight Words in Sand —  Incorporate different sensory materials, like sand or shaving cream into learning.  

Contractions with Plastic Eggs —  Those plastic Easter eggs can do more than just hold candy.  Use a few to practice reading contractions. 

Snowy Sight Words — Mix sensory play and learning together in this activity.  This one is perfect for winter time.  

Nerf Gun Sight Word Shoot —  Have Nerf guns at home?  Use them to get your child laughing and learning for hours.

Sight Word Pop.  —  No one can resist popping bubble wrap!  Save those over-sized packing bubbles to make learning to read more fun. 

What is the Purpose of Sight Words

Sight words are sometimes referred to as high frequency words.  These words make up a large portion of the words used in children’s early literature. 

There are two main word lists that are often used in schools. 

• The Dolch sight words are words that appear most often in reading material for students in kindergarten through second grade.
• The Fry words list is based on words ranked by how often they occur in materials for grades 3 – 9, with the first 100 words being the most often used words in the English language.    

Learning to identify sight words is critical for early readers.   

One reason for this is that many of the words are ones that can’t easily be sounded out or illustrated.  For example, think of the words  the, are, & said.  

Being familiar with the sight words also helps children build confidence and fluidity as they learn to read.  

Help your child become a better reader by trying out a few of these fun ways to practice sight words at home this week. 

You may also like:

• Shark Spelling Game
• Printable Activity for Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You
• Lego Sentence Building Activity 

 Originally published February 7, 2016. 

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The plastic bricks are not only fun to build with, but Legos are perfect for hands-on learning that your child will love.  In fact, you can use them for some fun sentence building activities at home and at school.  

Lego Sentence Building is a fun way to teach kids about sentence structure and the parts of speech.  

For more fun ways to teach parts of speech, check out our sticky notes parts of speech activity. 

When you mix a child’s interests with what they are learning, it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Using blocks to teach sentence structure makes learning fun.  You may also like our printable silly sentence activity.

Lego Sentence Building

Affiliate links are used below.  Read the full disclosure here.

For this Learning with Legos activity, you need:

• Legos  (I used the larger Duplo-sized Legos so I could write our words a bit larger.)
• Masking Tape
• Black Permanent Marker

Cut the masking tape to fit each block, and then use a marker to write one word per block.  

(I’ve also heard you can write directly on your blocks and clean the permanent marker off with hand sanitizer, but we weren’t ready to try that.)

You can color-code your words to help students quickly identify each different part of speech.  

For example: 

• Write all your nouns on yellow blocks.
• Write verbs on blue blocks.
• Use a marker to write the articles “a” and “the” on green.
• Write other adjectives (descriptive words) on red blocks. 

Choose nouns that your child will recognize and be excited to use.  

If you have an animal lover, you might use several types of animals (dog, monkey, horse).  You can also use names of family members.

For best results, choose verbs that can be immediately followed by a direct object (or another noun).  For instance, “hit,” and “saw” can be followed by a the direct object “ball” in the sentences:  “I hit the ball.”    “The dog saw the ball.”  

To make it easier for you to recreate this activity at home, here are the verbs we used:  hit, kissed, cooked, ate, threw, and sees.  

For older children you could use another color block for prepositions (on, under, over, behind…) and have your child make even longer sentences.    “The dog saw the ball under the bed.”  

(Teaching contraction words?  Check out this simple contractions activity.)

Sentence Building Activity

Once you have your blocks ready, it’s time to build sentences with Legos.

For younger children you may need to tell them which color block they need to use as they build their sentence.  

This is a great opportunity to introduce the different parts of speech.  

For example in the sentence pictured above I asked them to place the blocks in this order: green, yellow, blue, green, red, and yellow.  We paused to talk about how the yellow blocks were all nouns (person, place, thing, or idea) and the blue blocks were all action verbs.

For an older child you might challenge them to build a sentence without telling them which order the colors should go in.  Instead you could challenge them to find a noun or a verb as they create their sentence.

After a while you can take learning about sentence structure a step further.

 Once your child has created their sentence, have them write it out, making sure to use correct capitalization and end punctuation.

You can also use the Legos to help practice reading fluency.  

Build your own sentence using the blocks and ask your child to read it to you.  The sillier the sentence, the better!

This simple Lego learning activity not only teaches sentence structure but also introduces the parts of speech.  

If your house is littered with Legos, put those colorful bricks to good use with this Lego Sentence Building Activity.  

You may also like:

• Roll a Sentence Activity from This Reading Mama
• Subtraction Squish
• Hands-On Learning for Double Digit Math

Originally published January 16, 2015.

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I am so excited to be able to introduce you to a great new book that I helped co-author — ABCs & 123s: 40+ Hands-On Play Activities to Build Letter, Number, and Shape Skills.  

If you’ve ever googled how to teach my child abc’s and 123’s, than this book is for you.  

The ebook is full of fun hands-on learning activities that have been tried, tested and approved by our children.  

All of the activities are play based, and have been carefully chosen to help your child work on a wide range of math and language skills.

Teaching ABCs & 123s

ABCs & 123s: 40+ Hands-On Play Activities to Build Letter, Number, and Shape Skills is full of activities that your child will enjoy.  It will encourage them to think, question, explore as they learn.  

The pages are set up so they are easy to follow, with a material list and step-by-step instructions for each activity in the book.

What you’ll find in this ABCs & 123s book:

• • 40+  hands-on play ideas that will help your child build their letter and math skills
  • multisensory activities for children aged 2 to 8
  • resources for parents and teachers, at home or in the classroom, with ideas for indoor and outdoor learning
  • material lists, step-by-step instructions and full color photographs of every activity
  • suggestions for variations and extensions so you can adapt the activities to suit your child

Here’s a sneak peek of just some of the fun activities you and your child will find in the book.

ABCs and 123s contains a wide range of learning activities for literacy and math, including:

• learning to recognise and write letters and numbers

• understanding both upper and lower case letters

• drawing shapes and making marks

• working on alphabetic order

• working on spelling of your name, sight words, CVC words and other vocabulary

• developing language skills

• understanding one-to-one correspondence

• learning to count, to add, and subtract

• base-ten understanding and double digit addition  (using these homemade base-ten manipulatives)

Buy it worldwide for instant download.

This is an ebook, which means you will be sent a link that allows you to download a PDF containing the ebook and all the resources.

You can save it to your computer (or depending on the apps you have, a mobile device) and then either read it on screen or print some/all of the pages, as you prefer.  Click to download your copy here. 

You can buy the ebook wherever you are in the world. You pay via PayPal, which will take care of any currency conversion for you.  The ebook costs $14.99 in US currency.     

Get this book for * free * when you choose the bonus bundle!

This ebook costs $14.99 and you can buy it here.  Or choose our bonus bundle and you can have this book for free.

You’ll receive a copy of Up! and Make Your Mark, along with a free copy of ABCs and 123s.

• Make Your Mark will help your child to make their mark with wonderful projects that help develop a love of writing, creative storytelling, self-confidence, and compassion – along with six sets of bonus printables.
• Up! will take your child’s love of blocks and building, and go far and wide across the curriculum. With 30+ projects across math, literacy, science, art, and play, Up! shows you how to support passion-led, hands-on learning. It includes inspiring ideas for mobiles, rockets, airplanes, parachutes, build challenges and more. Includes 100 printables.

Buy two books at the regular price of $29.98 and you’ll get the third book for free!

Click here to choose the bundle and get ABCs and 123s for free.

The ABCs and 123s ebook is published and sold by Cathy James at NurtureStore.co.uk. Please direct any customer service queries regarding purchases of the ebook to support@nurturestore.co.uk or refer to the NurtureStore FAQ.

The ABCs and 123s ebook is protected under copyright © 2016.  All rights reserved.

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When mine were learning to read, I wanted to make sure that they grew up loving books. 

So, I went on a journey to discover how to make reading fun for both of them.

Affiliate links are used below.  See my full disclosure for more details. 

How to Make Reading Fun for Kids

Growing up, I remember having a wide variety to choose from when it came to reading.  

The first step to making reading fun is making sure your child has access to reading material they enjoy.  Include your typical story books as well as non-fiction books, magazines, and comic books.  

Comfortable Reading Space

Every house is different.  

When our kids were little we made a reading spot at the end of the hallway.  

They had a very full bookcase and 2 mini beanbag chairs they could snuggle in as they read.  Sometimes those beanbags and books made it out to our living room.  And that was okay.  

You might even consider creating your very own Reading Tent.   These adorable tents are perfect for encouraging early readers to sit a while with a few picture books.  

High-Interest Reading Material

That comfortable reading spot is only half the battle.  You need to have books the kids WANT to read.  

When it comes to early readers, I look for books with eye-catching illustrations and only 2-3 sentences per page.  (More than that and they tend to panic before they even try to read the page.)

And don’t forget chapter books!  

Bedtime is the perfect time for reading chapter books aloud to young kids.  

When choosing a good chapter book, I look for one that I know will draw them in.  I love it when I finish reading a chapter and they beg me to read “just one more!”

If you are looking for a chapter book series to read aloud to early readers, we suggest:

• Magic Tree House Series
• The Boxcar Children Series 

As kids get older, don’t limit them to books that are “in their level.”  Allow kids to read books that may be “below their level.” 

Likewise, if your child wants to try a book you think may be too difficult for them, let them try!  Being able to choose the books that interest them, without having to always worry about the book’s level, will make reading seem like less of a chore.  

Reading Games

Games are always fun for kids.  When it comes to early readers, you can get them excited about learning to read with a few simple Sight Word Games.  

There are lots of different online games for beginning readers, but for young readers I really like games that add some type of movement into reading as well.  One of our favorites is using large packaging bubbles to play Sight Word Pop.   

If you have stairs in your home, your child may enjoy practicing sight words on the stairs.   

And with all the zany characters from his books,  these Dr. Seuss sight word games are lots of fun.  

Reading should be fun!  These simple ideas will help your child enjoy reading at home.  

 You may also enjoy:

• Fun Ways to Practice Math Facts at Home
• Ways to Practice Spelling Words

The post How to Make Reading Fun first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

I love to read.  My husband loves to read.  Our son loves books and is excited to finally be starting to read.

The other day my daughter caught me off guard with, “Mommy, I hate just sitting and trying to sound out words.”

I could have panicked, I mean, how can she hate reading?  But then I realized something…she is a mover!  She didn’t say she hated reading, just that she hates “just sitting” and trying to sound out the words.  So lately our reading has incorporated a lot more movement.

This week we had a reading scavenger hunt,  a simple idea that helps make learning to read more fun!

Yes, we’ve had scavenger hunts before.  I used to draw the clues for them when they were younger.   But for some reason I haven’t done one with written clues before.  Sometimes you just need inspiration to remember those simple ideas!

While the kids were otherwise entertained, I jotted down very simple clues on Post-It Notes, and then quickly hid them in the appropriate spots.

I left the first clue on the kitchen table, where I was sure it would be found.

At first my daughter told me, “I can’t read this.”

But eventually curiosity got the best of her, and she started sounding out the unknown words, and she found the next clue.

With each clue she got a little more confident in herself.

With each clue I saw a little spark, a light if you will, going on when it came to reading.

This time around I used very simple clues, but this idea could easily be adapted for older children to give them more of a challenge.

And, since it’s a scavenger hunt, don’t forget the “treasure” at the end!  (We were working on a gingerbread man book at the time, so our treasure was a few small gingerbread man-shaped marshmallows I had hidden in the pantry.)

I’d love to hear how you’ve made reading fun for the kids!  Leave a comment below, because we are all in this together!

The post Early Reading Scavenger Hunt first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Sight words also play a big role in teaching early reading skills.  

Sight word games can make sight word practice at home more fun.   

You can easily make your own sight word tic-tac-toe game, and modify it to match the season or interests of your child.  

Affiliate links have been provided below.  See my full disclosure for more details. 

Sight Word Tic-Tac-Toe

This simple sight word activity takes almost no prep time.  (Which is awesome, because life with kids is busy!) 

Start by using a black marker to draw a large tic-tac-toe board on white paper.

Slide your paper into a clear dry erase pocket to keep your game board looking nice, and reuse it later with new words.

Then I use a dry-erase marker (I love these markers) to write one sight word (or CVC word) in each square.  

Next, you need game markers.    You could easily just use coins for this, with one person using pennies and another using nickles. 

Or, you could change things up depending on the season or your child’s interest.  

We did this activity in October, and I decided to make Halloween-themed markers for our game.   I used construction paper to cut out black bats and orange pumpkins for our game markers.  

In the winter you could use snowflakes and snowmen, or small Christmas trees and stockings.  

Whatever you choose for markers, you will want to have  5 of each.  

Sight Word Game 

Once you have the game set up, players should take turns reading the words on the board.  

If your child reads the word correctly, they get to put a marker in the square.  If they don’t read it correctly, they miss their turn and the other player gets to go.  

The first player to have three of their game pieces in a row wins!

Here are more fun ways to practice sight words at home:

• Drive to the Sight Word
• Sight Word Shoot
• Sight Word Pop!

The post Sight Word Tic-Tac-Toe first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.