Helping Your Child Learn Sight Words

Helping your child connect to new information is hard. Recently we have been working a lot on sight words. I have tried everything to make the sight words stick. We have used:

1.      Visuals: We made a visual board of the sight words we have learned. We add one word a week and review previous words.

 

2.      Multi-sensory approach: When teaching the words we hear them, see them, touch them, and play games with them.

·         I have him hearing the sight words in songs, books, saying the flash card words aloud and repeating them.

·          I have him see the words highlighted in books, on flashcards, and in activities.

·         We touch them by drawing them in sand and shaving cream. We also write them in glue and sprinkle glitter on them. Once dry, we run our fingers over the words to spell them out.

·         We play games with the words by turning the flash cards over and picking one word at a time to say.

But, out of the twelve words on his wall, he gets eight right consistently. I want him to do better than this. So, I thought a lot about my child and his interest. One of his favorite things to do is watch shows. I thought I would try a sight word show to help engage him more with learning these words. I found an amazing program called, “Meet the Sight Words” by Preschool Prep. My son loved this program and is now learning his sight words twice as fast as he was with all the activities I was doing before.

If your child is having a hard time academically, try brainstorming what your child likes and form a connection from there. Hopefully, your child will then start making rapid progress like mine did.

 * Preschool Prep also has other programs that teach shapes, numbers, letters, and phonics. All programs come with a dvd and books. I highly recommend this program.