Learning sight words helps children become great readers. Sight words are high-frequency words that readers recognize automatically. The first 850 words on the pre-primer & primer Dolch lists are seen often in writing.

Use these low-prep, engaging sight word activities to help students build and maintain their skills. These games explore words in a fun way that allows kids to apply what they know about letter-sound relationships, word patterns, and meaning.

Hangman

Hangman is a popular family game that can be used to help students practice spelling and vocabulary. It is easy to set up and requires little preparation. Students can use it as a review or extension activity after class. It is a great way to practice vocabulary for any subject.

To play the game, one player thinks of a word or phrase and the other player attempts to guess it by suggesting letters more or less randomly. If the player suggests a letter that is in the word, it is filled in, but if the suggestion does not appear in the word, the host draws one element of a hanged stick figure.

The player wins if they correctly guess the word before the stick figure is completed. The game is also fun and motivating for icebreaker activities in group settings. A popular list of words to use is a Harry Potter themed word list.

Add-a-Letter

Practicing sight words is one of the most important skills elementary students need to master. These high-frequency words are the building blocks of reading and can help them feel confident in their abilities as they move on to more complex texts.

The best way to reinforce these sight words is to use games that offer engaging and fun ways for kids to practice their reading, writing, and spelling skills. Hangman, letter ladders, and broken telephone are fun classroom classics that encourage children to be focused, engaged learners.

Another fun word list game is Add-a-Letter, which encourages students to think critically about the order of letters in a given word. This fast-paced puzzle requires solvers to identify the single letters that need to be added to four-letter words to form five-letter answers based on clues. Some puzzles provide rhyming clues, while others have a more general vocabulary theme.

Charades

Playing charades encourages children’s creativity and imagination. It also helps develop thinking and problem-solving skills. Kids can use a list of charade words or come up with their own. Some easy charade words for kids include animals, popular movies or YouTube videos, and famous people. Children can also use family members’ names to add to the fun.

One player from each team picks a word out of a container without speaking and then acts it out for the other players to guess. The actors can’t speak or make noises, but they can gesture to give small clues. For example, if the word is “book,” the actor might put their hands together like a book and open them.

The first team to guess the word correctly wins. It’s a great game to play during family gatherings and holidays. Kids love to have a laugh and participate in this fun activity.

Memory Game

If your child has a hard time keeping focused, memory games can help improve their attention span. Children can use memory games to develop a range of cognitive skills, including auditory working memory and visual-spatial working memory.

In this game, players look at a master list of words for an age-appropriate amount of time and then try to match each word with its correct place in the list. This game is a great way to develop both working memory and vocabulary.

One player ‘writes’ a word with their finger on the back of the second player, who then tries to identify the word. The player who can repeat the longest train of words wins.

Make your own Memory Game cards with our free Printable Memory Card Generator, using developmentally appropriate sight word sets. As your child’s reading skills advance, you can gradually increase the number of pairs of words in each game.

Trace-a-Word

Sight word practice is essential for early learners. These fun Read it – Trace it – Write it worksheets help kids build their vocabulary and develop fine motor skills. Children read the sight words, trace them neatly on the primary writing lines, use alpahbet letter stamps to “build” the word (one letter at a time) and finally write the word.

Trace and vestige have similar meanings: both imply a slight, though real, evidence of something: traces of an ancient civilization remain here and there. (As a verb, trace means to follow information or evidence to discover its origin or progress: She traced the telephone calls back to Paris.)

Our easy to use Worksheet Maker lets you create word tracing practice sheets for any words or phrases. Just enter them into the generator, click Regenerate and you have a printable worksheet that kids can use to develop their alphabetic and handwriting skills.

Text-a-Word

A strong vocabulary helps children build reading skills. Including sight words in that vocabulary makes it easier for them to recognize these high-frequency words when they come across them in reading.

To help your child learn sight words in context, teach them to read a story with the words on their list. This will help them to understand that the word is not just a standalone word, but also has meaning.

Another way to help your child recognize sight words in context is by playing a game of Sight Word Bingo. Write the words from their list onto index cards. Then, call out a sight word and see who can find it on their card and mark it with a marker or chip. Continue this until someone gets five in a row and calls out “Bingo!” This is a fun, interactive way to help kids learn sight words.