Sight Words Activities for Preschool
When planning sight word activities for preschoolers, keep in mind how children 4 and younger develop emerging literacy skills. At that age, children learn through active exploration rather than through rote learning. Choose no more than four or five sight words from an interesting story you are reading. Incorporate sight word activities into play centers in logical, natural ways. Young children generally find no meaning in a chart displaying a list of words and are less likely to retain information presented in this way.
Other People Are Reading
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Story Time
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Choose one or two words from the story you are reading as sight words. Write the words on small squares of tagboard or word strips, putting one word on each piece. Add a picture to match the word and laminate the strips. Secure a craft stick to the back. During story time, ask the children to raise their word strip when they hear you read it in the story. Or read the story carefully through once. Then write down four or five words from the story on chart paper.
Writing
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After reading a story, ask the children to think about it. Offer a prompt such as "What could Goldilocks have done differently?" or "How would you help the Little Red Hen?" Write down the children's responses and ask them to make a simple illustration of their idea. As the children develop emerging literacy skills, they may write down some of the words themselves. Make a small chart of four or five sight words from the story that the children can refer to as they are writing. Help them sound out other words or allow them to use inventive spelling.
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Play
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Incorporate sight words into play activities. For example, if you've just read "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," make bear headbands out of construction paper or fun foam. Cut out circles for ears. Label the headbands with the words, "Mama Bear," "Papa Bear" or "Baby Bear." After reading a story about a grocery store or restaurant, make your own grocery store or restaurant in the pretend center. With the children's help, label the area with with the words, "grocery store," or "pizza shop." Make menus, charts and labels for everything you are using. Make labels for the block center, too.
Environmental Print
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Label common objects in your classroom, such as the table, door, sink, books, paint or paper. Put labels on boxes and bins that show a photo of the objects inside and also include the word. Incorporating environmental print in this way helps children make the connection that letters and words are a means of communication. Properly labeling bins also facilitates simpler clean-up times because the children know where to put things.
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References
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- Photo Credit little preschooler image by Renata Osinska from Fotolia.com
