Saturday, September 27, 2008

Alphabet and Sight Word Games

Below you will find suggested game activities for reinforcing the alphabet and sight words.

Please Participate!

Please feel free to add your ideas, just click on the comments button at the end of this posting, type your comment. I will add your suggestion when I receive notification that a comment has been added.

1. Alphabet and Sight Word Bingo
Children really enjoy playing alphabet or sight word bingo. This is a really worthwhile activity in reinforcing letters or words they have previously learned. The link below provides a free software to make bingo cards. It allows you to shuffle the letters and words to different locations.

Bingo Card Software

2. Alphabet or Sight Word Musical Chairs
This would be a great activity to do during gym time. Post letters or words on chairs or just taped to the floor. Play music and once the music stops children must find a letter or word. They must say the name of the letter or identify an object that begins with the same letter sound or sight word.

3. Easter Egg Hunt
Purchase a large container of different colored plastic eggs. Place letters or words in each egg. Hide them around the classroom or in a center. Children must hunt and find them. Once they find the egg they open it and say the name of the letter or something that begins with that letter sound or the focus sight word. If they are correct they can keep the egg. The one with the most eggs wins the game.

4. The Prize Egg (played similar to hot potato). Have different colored plastic eggs (enough for each child). Again, put a letter or word in each egg. The children assemble in a circle. As music is playing the eggs are being passed around in a circle. When the music stops, the children discontinue passing the eggs. Call out a certain color of egg as being the "prize egg". The children holding the prize eggs must open it and say the name of the letter or an object that begins with that letter sound or focus sight word(s).

5. Rolling the Dice
Make your own dice or purchase wooden ones. Print the alphabet letters or words you would like the children to practice. Children roll the dice and say the letter or word printed on it.

6. Alphabet or Sight Word Concentration
Display a few alphabet letters or sight words for all the children view. Have children practice identifying them. Have children close their eyes and take one away. The children determine which one was taken away. This would be a good game to place in a center.

7. Alphabet or Sight Word Board Game
Make a game board (chart) with the words or alphabet letters you have been working on. Make cards with these letters or words and extra cards that do not contain these. Children pick a card. If they have one that is on the game board they can color it (the board can be laminated and the children can use washable markers). The child that has the game board completed will be the winner.

Another Version - More Difficult
You can use alphabet picture cards and the children eliminate the letter that the picture begins with. They must not only identify the letter but they must also be familiar with the sound it makes. The alphabet pictures found in the members area of our sister site could be used (sister site)

8. Alphabet or Sight Word Race
Place the alphabet letters or sight words you wish the children to identify on the floor at the end of the room (this would work even better in the gym). Line children up in two rows. Call out a letter or sight word. The first two children race to find it. The one who picks it up first takes it back to his/her group. The race continues until all the children have had a chance to race. The group that has the most, wins the game.

9. Playdough and Glitter Sight Words
When I was teaching, I had my students form the sight words out of Play Dough. They loved, it, of course. It is also very effective for tactile learners or very active kids.

My son, age 5, and I are making a sight word game right now. I write a sight word with pencil, and he writes over it with glitter glue pens. I am going to have him trace over his finished cards with his finger once dry, while he says the word out loud.
THANKS CARRIE!

More Sight Word Activities
1. Children make the focus sight words by using alphabet stamps.
2. Give children the sight word with the letters cut out. They must rearrange the letters to make the focus sight word(s).

More ideas can be found in the follow links:

Literacy Center Ideas

More Literacy Center Ideas

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I was teaching, I had my students form the sight words out of Play Dough. They loved, it, of course. It is also very effective for tactile learners or very active kids.

My son, age 5, and I are making a sight word game right now. I write a sight word with pencil, and he writes over it with glitter glue pens. I am going to have him trace over his finished cards with his finger once dry, while he says the word out loud.

Michelle said...

Great ideas! Thanks for posting them!

Anonymous said...

Great ideas. I have some ideas coming to my site.

GG said...

This is a nice one to also help develop motor skills.
On a regular 8x10 paper I would draw a 4x4 lower case letter and then have my 3 and half year old son stamp over the letter line with a bingo marker. Of course I had to start the bingo ink for him first. Then I would sometimes draw a picture, in one of the empty corners on the same paper, of a simple word that begins with the letter he had just stamped over. For example I drew and pointed to the picture of a cartoonish dog head for d (then say the d sound) is for dog.

Anonymous said...

I showed this video to my class that uses kinesthetic movements for each word and it worked wonders! It seemed like suddenly everything stuck with them and they were finally able to not only recognize the words but also spell them. I borrowed it from a mother of a student a few years ago and returned it. I would like to find one. I think the name of the video is something like Kid 2020, but I'm not sure.

Anonymous said...

Nice brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you for your information.

Anonymous said...

To review our sight words at the end of the year I wrote them on a beach ball. As a class we sat in a circle and rolled the ball from student to student. When a student caught the ball the job was to read the words that the students hands landed on. After a few times of reading the single word we started to read all the words on that panel of the beach ball.

Anonymous said...

I also like to use letter magnets in my room...the students can make sight words on a lunch tray that I bought so that their work doesn't get mixed up with another students.