Sight words activity for preschool
10 Clever Games to Help Your Child Learn Sight Words
Big, at, can, does, go, see: these are just a few of what are commonly referred to as sight words. Sight words are those foundational words that appear frequently wherever you see words in print. Children should recognize sight words without sounding out the letters to build reading speed and fluency.
Sight words are unique. Many of them can't be figured out phonetically, and they are often an exception to the rules of letter–sound relationships. The best way to learn these words is through familiarity and memorization. This does not mean, however, that you have to sit with your child and use boring and basic flashcards. The best way children learn is by engaging in playful activities. Active learning will not only help your child retain the sight words, but will also develop skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, innovation, self-regulation, and working memory.
Try these 10 fun active learning games to help your child learn sight words and more!
1.Just in time for spring! You'll need paper (cut into strips), markers, and plastic eggs you can open. Write a sight word on each of the paper strips and place one strip in each egg. Hide the eggs all around your backyard or living room. Have a fun egg hunt with your child. Record one point for each egg found and two points if your child can read the sight word. How many points did your child get? Play again and see if she can get more points the next time.
2. Read An Interactive Book!In the Curious World App, you can read over a hundred books such as Goldilocks or Curious George Feeds the Animals. When your child selects the 'Read To Me' option, each word will be highlighted as it is spoken. The more books she reads, the more she will start to recognize common sight words. Click below to try it now!
https://kidsy.curiousworld.com/book/4367?site=cw
3. Sight Word Smash-UpYou will need a few beanbags, index cards, and a marker.
Write a sight word on each card. Spread the word cards on the floor. Shout out words and have your child toss beanbags onto them. Next, have your child shout out the word and see if you can hit them with the beanbags.
Make a grid (adjust the size depending on your child's abilities), and write a sight word in each square. Next, give your child some counters and read one of the words out loud. If your child can find the correct word, she gets to place her counter in the square. When she has completed a row or a column, she has won the game - bingo! For a digital version of this game, check out the Curious World App. Get 20% off your first year when you follow this link (discount applied at checkout).
5. Word WalkYou will need white paper plates and a marker. Write a sight word on each of the plates. Create a path all around the house using the paper plates. Start at the beginning of the path and have your child read each word as she walks to the end of the path.
Your child can pick up the plate each time she reads a word. Repeat the game by creating a new path.
Write 20 sight words on 20 pieces of paper. Use words you want your child to learn. Stick the words on a wall. Get a flashlight and dim the lights. Shine the light on a word. Ask your child to read the word. Switch it up by reading a word and having your child find it with the flashlight. Make the activity even more fun using black paper and a glow-in-the-dark crayon or marker.
Oh no, the aliens are attacking! Move the spaceship and shoot down the correct sight word to stop them before they reach earth. Exclusive to the Curious World App.
8. Magic Reveal!You will need heavy white paper such as poster board or cardboard, a white crayon, watercolor paints, and a paintbrush. Using the white crayon, write sight words in a random pattern on the paper. Next, have your child paint on the paper with watercolor paints.
As the words are revealed, ask her to name the words she sees.
Children love puzzles! Take a 20 to 100-piece puzzle, depending on the size of puzzle your child can handle, and write a sight word on the back of each piece. Have your child pick up a piece and read the word before putting it in the puzzle. If she struggles with the word, read it to her and put the piece aside for her to come back to and try again.
10. Catch the WordStart with 10 small balls. Tape a sight word on each ball. Play a simple game of catch, and each time your child catches a ball, she will read the word aloud. Repeat with the other balls and keep the action going.
25 low-prep sight word activities
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Today I’m sharing some simple sight word activities that you can prepare in minutes!
So what are sight words, anyway?
Some people will tell you that sight words are words that kids can’t sound out; they just have to learn them by sight.
Others tell you that sight words are the high frequency words: the words that kids encounter the most when they read.
But researchers tell us that sight words are words we recognize automatically without needing to sound out or guess.
The real question is … how can we turn high frequency words INTO sight words?
The number one thing to do is to teach each word explicitly. That’s why I created my set of sight word lessons with decodable books.
Once you’ve taught the words with attention to the spelling patterns (these sight word worksheets are also great for this), you’re ready for these low prep sight word activities that you can put together in under 15 minutes!
1- It takes just 5 minutes to set up Sight Word Sticky Note Match. Just write the words on sticky notes and have your child cover the words on a dry erase board!
2 – Grab your alphabet stamps and some play dough for this simple sight word activity.
3 – Write the words on sticky notes. Then have your child write them in sand.
4 – Teach sight word songs.
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5 – Write the words on sticky notes. Then have your child swat each sight word with a fly swatter as you name it!
6 –Do fun actions with your sight words with This Reading Mama’s free action cards.
7 – Write sight words in play dough with a stick or wooden skewer.
8 – Try chanting sight words in a variety of different ways – like a robot, a cheerleader, and more! You can get free sight word chants on TPT here.
HANDS-ON PRACTICE FOR SIGHT WORDS
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9 – Make a sight word memory game. Just write each sight word on two different index cards. Then turn the cards over and invite your child to find the matches.
10 – Print these free sight word cards and build the words with letter tiles. When you join This Reading Mama’s free email list, you’ll get lots of free sight word cards! Learn more here.
11- Learning is always more fun with dice! Grab these free rainbow roll & write pages for a variety of sight words. Kids roll a die, check the key at the top of the page, and write the word in a particular color.
12 – This is such a creative way to practice writing sight words! Find the words with a magnifying glass and write them on the lines.
Get the freebie here.
13 – Are you students learning beginning sight words? Print and play sight word blackout.
14 – Simply write your child’s sight words on a piece of paper and have him stamp them with alphabet stamps.
15. Grab the play dough, a sheet protector, and a dry erase marker. Your child can build the word with play dough and write it on the lines below. Get the freebie here.
16 – Grab these free color-by-sight-word pages.
17 – Get some colorful craft sticks and write the words with a permanent marker for some simple sight word puzzles.
18- Sight Word Showdown is both simple and genius! Just grab a stack of index cards and write each word twice. Then follow the directions in this post.
19 – Write sight words in muffin tin liners and play a simple game of Three in a Row.
20 – Bury magnetic letters in a sensory material.
Have children dig out the letters to build words.
21 – Make a sight word parking lot. Draw tiny parking spots on a piece of poster board, and write a sight word in each one. As you name the words, have your child park a toy car in each spot. Learn more here.
22- Practice writing sight words using a dry erase marker on a dry erase board.
23- Write sight words on craft sticks and provide some magnetic letters for this portable sight word activity.
24 – Where’s the bear? Write the words on paper cups and hide a small bear or other tiny object. Your child guesses where the bear is hiding by naming the word on the cup.
25 – Go on a simple sight word hunt by matching the sticky note sight words to the words on a clip board. (This one’s a favorite at our house.)
And there you have it! 25 low-prep ways to practice sight words!
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Free Reading Printables for Pre-K-3rd Grade
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Types of activities of preschoolers: playful, productive, cognitive, labor
Content
- 1 Why is involvement in activities important for a preschooler
- 2 Variety of types and forms of activities at preschool age
- 9.1 Productive activities
- 9.1 Productive activities
- 4 Creative activities
- 4.1 Visual arts
- 4.2 Construction
- 4.3 Music and dance activities
- 5 Cognitive research activity
- 6 Labor activity
- 7 Educational activity
Children of preschool age are always involved in some kind of activity.
They run, play, look at pictures and books, want to wash dishes like mom, or knock with a hammer like dad ... The activities of preschoolers are diverse, and all of them are vital. So in childhood, three interrelated processes take place: the development of the cognitive sphere, the development of activities and the formation of personality.
Why involvement in activities is important for a preschooler
Various types of activities enable preschool children to actively explore the world around them, try their hand, and gain first experience.
Children's activity is understood as a process formed by need and specific actions. Ideally, the result is still important, compared with the initial desire (we got what we aspired to, or not). But preschool children are far from always result-oriented; direct actions in which they are interested are useful to them.
The special value of the activity lies in the fact that there is a two-way process. Developing, the preschooler learns to perform more complex actions, and by engaging in activities, he is immersed in conditions that stimulate his development.
Conditions are created for the speech development of preschoolers through various activities. Whatever the child does, he accompanies his occupation with words. With the help of speech, children reveal the causes of behavior, express the goals of their actions: “I am building a house”, “I will comb my dolls”, etc.
A variety of types and forms of activity at preschool age
A preschooler gradually masters those types of activities that are feasible for him at a certain age stage. In early childhood, it is necessary to master actions with objects. Then comes the turn of the game, creativity and mental actions aimed at solving the problem.
Each age period is distinguished by the predominance of some types of activity over others. The dominant species is the most influential, therefore it is distinguished as the leading activity.
The involvement of the child in the case is carried out in different ways. Interest and attempts to do something can arise spontaneously under the influence of momentary desire, or when the baby observes others and seeks to imitate.
Also, children's activities can be organized by adults and correspond to a specific goal to develop useful skills.
The child is especially prone to certain activities. Perhaps he has the makings of drawing or music, construction or logical thinking. Appropriate activities will help develop the abilities of a preschooler, given to him by nature.
A preschooler can enthusiastically build a house out of blocks or draw, but he is also attracted to collective activities. The collective form provides other possibilities. The child sees what peers are doing, notices what actions are approved, and role models are formed in his mind.
Productive activities
Through individual activities, the child creates a real product that can be shown to others or appreciated. In these cases, productive activities of preschoolers take place.
These primarily include drawing, designing, making appliqués.
The peculiarities of productive activity lie in the fact that, by depicting or modeling, a preschooler receives multifaceted material for the development of perception.
He needs to figure out the size and shape of the object, figure out how to display them on a sheet or in a model. The child develops the perception of color and the technique of detailed examination.
Playing activity
Most of the time a preschooler is busy with games. The game develops and is the leading activity at this age. For a period of 3 to 7 years, gaming activity changes greatly, enriched with new forms and content.
A three-year-old child can play alone, being carried away by an object. Interest in how peers play arises somewhat later. Younger preschoolers begin to imitate each other, show their toys, they can just run together, and for them this is already a game.
The most common in preschool childhood are outdoor and role-playing games. Outdoor games, such as hide-and-seek or catch-up, are aimed at developing motor skills.
They are distinguished by strict rules - otherwise there will be no game. Interestingly, until the age of 4, the child does not understand why he is running away or hiding, but he follows the rule.
Even in such a simple activity, the formation of ideas about the rules and norms is laid.
Role play is especially important for a preschooler. Acting according to the rules of the role, the child develops imagination, masters the norms of communication, learns to control his behavior.
The game prepares the preschooler for the next type of application of his forces - for artistic productive activity.
Creative activity
Artistic or creative activity of a preschooler develops in accordance with the principle “from simple to more complex”. In children's creativity, much depends on the extent to which the child owns the means and methods of transforming everything that he sees, hears and feels into images and models.
There are very few such methods and means at the disposal of the younger preschooler. Only by the age of 6-7, a preschooler learns a lot: draw and cut out of paper, imagine images before they are embodied in a drawing or model, hold the idea of a conceived composition and consistently create it.
Artistic activity, in turn, is represented by several types.
Fine arts
The child's fine arts include drawing, modeling, making appliqués. Classes are useful at any age, since children are more often attracted to the process itself, and not the result. It doesn’t matter that the baby gets only chaotic lines and circles. In these inept actions, the hand and the technique of drawing movements, visual perception develop, a sense of color and harmonious color combinations is formed.
Practicing drawing, a preschooler masters the space of a sheet. At 5 years old, he will no longer begin to draw everything in a row on one sheet, but will begin to demand a new one - one for the Snowman, and the other for the meadow with flowers. The child comes to understand that the creation of a drawing requires compliance with a single composition.
Making appliqués gives the child the first idea of symmetry. Symmetry becomes a discovery for a preschooler when snowflakes, leaflets and other elements of an applique plot are cut out of a folded sheet of paper.
After this practice, children develop the ability to see symmetry in the world around them.
Construction
The constructive activity of a preschooler is the construction of various buildings and the creation of models from Lego parts and other plastic or wooden sets. Paper construction belongs to the same category.
In practical actions, a preschooler discovers existing patterns. There is an awareness of what shapes and sizes the parts should have in order for them to fit together. Experimenting, children come to understand that when building a tower, it is necessary to make the base wider so that it is more stable - this is how the concept of stability and balance is formed.
Construction develops the ability to perceive the object as a whole. A preschooler learns to plan a few steps ahead, and then implement his plan. This activity develops constructive thinking.
Musical and dance activities
Musical activities are rarely mentioned in the context of the development of a preschooler.
At the same time, it is an actively present and important topic in a child's life. Children early begin to respond to music, the perception of musical sounds and rhythm is formed.
Preschoolers of all ages enjoy dancing to music. Musical abilities and ear for music develop.
Dance classes have a significant impact on the motor and general development of the child. He remembers and performs the movements in a given order, learns to distribute attention between the direct execution of movements and observation of the coach or dance partners. At the same time, the ability to perceive a visual-motor image develops. As the dance moves are mastered, the preschooler can be creative and create their own dance.
Cognitive research activity
Cognitive activity of a preschooler contributes to the development of mental activity and thinking. Such activity can manifest itself in a practical and mental form. In the case when the child conducts the simplest experiments, cognitive research activity takes place.
The preschooler does not engage in experimentation for fun. He is confronted with a previously unknown property of the object and seeks to understand this property, to discover the argument. The child checks how the paper boat floats and what happens when the paper is completely saturated with water. He is experimenting with what can be thrown higher - a ball or a balloon.
In such activity, a preschooler discovers the essential features of objects and phenomena. He can not explain them, and then follows a chain of questions to an adult. Cognitive interest intensifies and pushes for new experiences. The value of children's research activity lies in the fact that it is a way of knowing the world around us.
Labor activity
A preschooler wants to be like mom or dad. He watches what adults are doing, and he also wants to try his hand. At this time, the child is driven by a strong interest and desire to be on an equal footing.
The child is fascinated by the process, not the result.
He wants to knead the dough with his mother and water the flowers in the flower bed next to his father. The preschooler declares that he will help. It’s not a problem that the “assistant” will be covered in flour, or pour water from a watering can on himself. Participation in a useful cause is important.
The main rule that parents should be guided by is: don't get annoyed! The child shows independence, realizes his needs. In addition, he absorbs the manners of adults, and the parental reaction will become a model of behavior for him in the future.
The child expects a positive assessment, praise, approval of his actions. A sense of pride in their achievements in a child manifests itself already at the age of 3 years, as soon as he discovered his own self. It is very important to praise the child and entrust him with the work that is feasible for him.
The special value of labor activity from the point of view of a younger preschooler lies in the fact that he becomes an employee of an adult and acts in a real situation, not a game one.
The older preschooler has other priorities. He is happy to get to work if he understands its importance. Whatever the motive for inclusion in the activity, the preschooler gradually develops labor skills.
Educational activities
At senior preschool age, children become interested in more serious "adult" skills - reading, counting. Cognitive motives are formed. All these are prerequisites for the fact that the child is ready to learn new things and solve more complex problems. Games and creative activities prepare the preschooler for learning activities.
The first skills of educational activity are instilled in a preschooler in a didactic game. Didactic games are called games specially invented by adults so that children gain new knowledge and develop skills.
At first in a playful way, but over time, preschoolers listen to educational material with interest, read and perform simple counting operations even without a playful context.
With regard to learning activities, preschoolers should not be overloaded with new knowledge.
It is much more important to prepare children for the fact that schooling requires the arbitrariness of cognitive processes. And for this it is necessary to conduct games with children for attention, for the development of arbitrary perception and memory.
In an effort to fully develop the child, adults need to remember that all activities of children benefit them. It is important for a preschooler to play and draw, design and perform feasible household chores. Parents should give the child the opportunity to exercise independence, be patient with children's experimentation, and actively engage in joint activities. The development of all types of activities is paid attention to in kindergartens, and the independent activities of children in preschool educational institutions are encouraged and supported.
Play as a type of activity
One of the most important achievements of Soviet developmental psychology is the establishment of the leading role of activity in the child's mental development.
The study of specific activities, the contribution they make to the formation of personality and to the development of certain aspects of the child's psyche at each age stage, acts as a way to penetrate into the intimate laws of the formation of human consciousness.
However, the specific types of child activity have not been adequately and extremely unevenly studied in psychology. Perhaps the most "lucky" game in this respect. Its exceptional importance for mental development attracted the attention of such prominent representatives of the Soviet psychological school as L. S. Vygotsky, L. N. Leontiev, and D. B. Elkonin. The study of play served as one of the sources for the development of a number of central provisions of the general psychological theory of activity. But until recently, the data accumulated in research on the game, and the theoretical propositions put forward on their basis, were scattered, scattered in separate articles and not brought into a clear system.
The published new book by D. B. Elkonin sums up the theoretical and experimental studies of the game, which were conducted by the author, his colleagues and students, as well as other Soviet psychologists working in line with the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky for more than four decades. For the first time in the book, the theory of play as a special type of children's activity that has developed in the course of these studies is presented in a detailed and reasoned way, the historical prerequisites for the emergence of play, its structure, the stages of its development in ontogenesis, and the role of play in the mental development of the child are analyzed.
The theoretical provisions developed by the author are based, on the one hand, on a critical analysis of the most significant foreign concepts of the game, on the other hand, on the rich factual material obtained in specific studies.
The central idea of the book is the idea of the social nature of children's play.
The game is considered as a form of "life and special activity of the child in orientation in the world of human actions, human relations, tasks and motives of human activity" (p. 138). Consistently realizing this idea, D. B. Elkonin reveals the inconsistency of naturalistic approaches to understanding the nature of children's play, either directly considering it in a general context with the so-called games of young animals, or deriving play from various kinds of deep drives, or, finally, explaining it by conditions adaptation of the child to life in society. At the same time, in the views of various researchers, rational moments are singled out and emphasized, which shed light on the psychological meaning of individual aspects and features of children's play. Turning to the analysis of the consideration of the problems of play in Soviet psychological science, D. B. Elkonin traces how, step by step, an approach to the game crystallizes as a special type of activity embodying its relation to the surrounding, primarily social reality and having its own specific content and structure - a special the subject and motives of activity and a special system of actions.
The main object of study of the author of the book is an extended form of play activity, i.e. role play, which reaches its highest point of development in senior preschool age. Comparison of the data available in the ethnographic literature on the place of the child in society at various stages of historical development and on the nature and content of children's games at these same historical stages allows D. B. Elkonin to put forward and substantiate a hypothesis about the historical emergence of a role-playing game and a special period in a child's life - preschool period of development, during which the role-playing game is the leading activity. According to this hypothesis, at the early stages of the development of society, there are no role-playing games, and the main form of education is the direct participation of children in the life of society, in productive labor. The genesis of the role-playing game is associated with the increasing complexity of the tools of labor and the lengthening of the period of childhood - the period during which the child cannot be included in productive labor.
The game also appears as a special way of penetrating into spheres of life and relationships of adults that are already inaccessible to the direct participation of children, as one of the forms of preparing children for subsequent participation in the life of society.
Thus, from the point of view of the author of the book, "play is social in its content precisely because it is social in nature, in its origin, that is, it arises from the conditions of the child's life in society" (p. 32).
The analysis of the expanded form of play activity, carried out by D. B. Elkonin, includes the identification of its structure and the selection of its main, further indecomposable unit that preserves all the properties of the whole. The structural components of the game are the roles that children take on; game actions that are generalized and abbreviated; playful use of objects, in which real objects are replaced by play objects; and, finally, real relations between playing children, expressed in various remarks, remarks, through which the course of play is regulated.
The main unit of the game is the role and the actions organically related to it for its implementation. In this unit, the affective-motivational and operational-technical aspects of activity are presented in an indissoluble unity. The content of the roles realized with the help of game actions is the relationship between people, which are carried out through actions with objects.
The characterization of the extended form of play activity serves as the starting point in the book for analyzing the emergence of this activity, its development and decay, and its significance in the life and development of the child. In considering these problems, D. B. Elkonin draws on extensive material of observations and experiments, part of which is published for the first time. Consideration begins with the formation of the prerequisites for role play throughout early childhood. The author emphasizes that these prerequisites do not arise spontaneously in any case.
They are formed in the course of the activity and communication of the child with an adult under the decisive influence of training on the part of an adult.
Further, the author sets out the facts that characterize the development of the game as a whole and its individual structural components in preschool age, and formulates conclusions regarding the stages and patterns of such development. The emergence and development of a role, the change in the relationship between an object, action, and word in play (connections between the renaming of objects and their playful use as substitutes for other objects), and finally, the development of the child’s relationship to the rule in play, are subjected to special analysis.
In the most general form, the traceable patterns of development of these aspects of the game can be designated as a transition from games, the main content of which is social in their orientation, objective actions, correlated with the logic of real actions, to games, where the main content is social relations between people and social the meaning of their activities, correlated with real relationships between people; strengthening the connection of the word with the system of objective actions, which ensures the performance of game actions with objects in accordance with the name that they receive in the game, and not with their own objective meaning; gradual mastery of the subordination of actions to a rule determined by the role, and then to the conditional rule of the game, no longer connected with the plot.
Raising the question of the role of play in the mental development of a child, D. B. Elkonin points out a fundamentally important difference between its general developmental and narrowly didactic meaning, i.e., a meaning that comes down to the acquisition of new ideas, skills and abilities. This second meaning of the game, from the point of view of the author, is very limited and is not connected with the use of its specific features.
D. B. Elkonin considers the main significance of play to be its significance for the development of the emotional-need sphere of the child. This is the emergence of motives of activity that are new in their content and, at the same time, the formation of a new psychological form of motives. Thanks to the game penetration into the meaning of the activities and relationships of adults, by the end of preschool childhood, a child has a desire to become an adult and actually perform its functions, concretized in the form of a desire to go to school and begin to carry out serious socially significant activities.
At the same time, in the game there is a transition from motives that have the form of affectively colored immediate desires to motives that have the form of generalized intentions that are on the verge of consciousness.
D. B. Elkonin sees other forms of the specific influence of play on the child’s mental development in the fact that certain general mechanisms of cognitive activity and the development of voluntary behavior are formed in it. The practice of changing position in the game when taking on a role, the practice of treating a partner from the point of view of the role that he performs, lead, according to D. B. Elkonin, to overcoming "cognitive egocentrism", to the formation of a mechanism for a possible change of position and coordinating one's point of view with others. At the same time, in the game, a transition is made from detailed actions with substitute objects to generalized, conditional actions in the mind, using detached objects of meaning. Because of this, the prerequisites for the formation of mental actions based on speech are formed in the game.
Finally, the game acts as an activity in which behavior acquires an arbitrary character - it begins to be carried out in accordance with a model given in the form of a rule contained in a role or a selected rule, and controlled by comparing it with this model as a standard. When reading the book, it causes a certain regret that not all the questions raised in it are considered with sufficient completeness, some are only mentioned. Thus, in singling out the real relationships that arise between children in play as one of its main components, the author does not address them at all. Meanwhile, the problem of the correlation of strong-willed and real relationships in the game served as the subject of heated discussions, and it would be important for the reader to know the opinion of D.B. Elkonin on this issue. The last chapter, devoted to the role of play in the mental development of the child and of particular interest to the psychologist, is very brief (18 seconds), and a number of the provisions expressed in it remain undisclosed.
