Sight Word Games and Activities

Three sight word games you can play tonight with paper and a pen. Word hunt: write words on sticky notes, hide them around a room, and your child reads each one aloud as they find it. Memory match: write every word on two cards, lay them face down, and your child reads each card they turn over. Password: tape a word to a door, and nobody goes through until your child reads it.

Play them only with the words your child has to learn by heart, the few common words that break the usual spelling patterns, like said, was and the. Most of a school sight word list can be sounded out, and those words get sounding-out practice instead.

Five minutes is a whole session. Stop while your child still wants another turn.

Why are games better than flashcard drills for sight words?

Sight word games work better than drills for two reasons, and neither of them is that games are fun. A game makes your child pull the word out of memory rather than look at the answer, and it spreads those turns across the week instead of piling them into one sitting.

Those two are not a hunch. When John Dunlosky and colleagues reviewed ten common study techniques for Psychological Science in the Public Interest in 2013, only two earned their highest utility rating: practice testing (retrieving the answer instead of reviewing it) and distributed practice (spreading sessions out). The review is about learning in general, not sight words, and most of its studies were with older students, but it reports that “children of all ages benefit from distributed study.” Five minutes of a game on four days is both of the techniques that worked.

A game also lets a child be wrong without it feeling like a test. A missed card costs a turn, and the next turn comes round in seconds. That matters most for the child who has started to refuse flashcards.

Flashcards are not the enemy. Most of these games are flashcards, played so that a willing child takes more turns. Five minutes of holding up cards is fine; twenty is how a child learns to dread the pile.

These are reading games: the word is in front of your child, and the job is to say it. If you want your child to write the words from memory, spelling games for 1st and 2nd graders work the other way round, with the word out of sight.

Which words should go in a sight word game?

Only the words your child has to learn by heart. A recognition game, where your child sees a word and says it, is memorization practice, and most of a school sight word list does not need memorizing.

Reading specialists Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter and Tina Osenga, writing for Reading Rockets, report that 138 of the 220 words on the Dolch list, or 63 percent, can be sounded out once all the regular spelling patterns are taken into account. They call the rest “Heart Words,” because some part of each one has to be learned by heart.

Playing bingo with can, went and big teaches your child to know those words by their shape, when they could have read them from their letters. Recognizing a word by its shape is guessing, and it stops working as soon as two words look alike.

So build the game pile from heart words only. Ours are already sorted: the kindergarten heart words are nine words, 1st grade has 21 and 2nd grade has 22, and the Dolch list is sorted the same way at every level. If your school sent its own list, sort it into two piles first.

The words your child can sound out still need practice, just a different kind: the sounding-out games in my child knows letter sounds but can’t sound out words.

A good game pile is this week’s two or three new heart words mixed with ones learned before, about ten cards in all.

No-prep sight word games you can play tonight

Everything here needs paper, a pen, or things already in your house, and in every game your child reads the word aloud. A child who only points at a card could be matching shapes.

1. Word hunt. Hide words on sticky notes around a room. Your child reads each one aloud as they find it. Any age, and the best first game.

2. Memory match. Write each word on two cards and lay them face down. Turn two over and read both aloud; a pair is kept once both are read. From kindergarten, with six to eight pairs.

3. Bingo. Draw a three-by-three grid for each player and fill it with heart words, in a different order on every board. The caller reads a word from a card, and each player finds it, reads it back and covers it with a coin. Let your child be the caller too: reading the card aloud is the practice. Or print it: the heart word sections on our kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade and Dolch lists each have a free printable bingo set: three boards, the caller cards, and a page of covers to cut out. Nine or more words, and best with a sibling.

4. Slap it. Lay six cards face up. You say a word, and your child slaps the card and reads it back to you. Then swap. Kindergarten and up.

5. Password. Tape a word to a bedroom door. Nobody goes through until they read it, you included, and the word changes every morning. A kindergarten favorite.

6. Go fish. Make two cards for every word and deal five each. Ask for a match by reading your card aloud: “Do you have said?” From late kindergarten.

7. Cup hide. Put a word card under each of four upturned cups and a small toy under one. Your child lifts a cup, reads the word, and keeps going until the toy turns up.

8. Silly sentences. Mix heart word cards with a few picture words your child can sound out, like cat and bus, and build a sentence together: “The cat was on the bus.” Your child reads it back.

9. Find it in a book. Hunt for today’s word on a page of the book you are reading together. This is the most useful game here, because reading the word inside real text is what all the others are practice for.

No timers. A race against the clock turns a child who needs longer into a child who loses. “Beat your own pile,” reading one more card than yesterday with no clock running, keeps the challenge without the timer.

If you would rather not write cards, every heart word section on our lists has free printable word cards: kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade and Dolch. Print them twice and you have a deck for memory match, go fish and slap it.

Which sight word games get your child moving?

Movement games work because they hold a five-year-old’s attention, not because your child is a particular kind of learner. A 2008 review led by Harold Pashler in Psychological Science in the Public Interest found that studies built to test the idea almost never show that matching teaching to a supposed learning style improves anything. Movement is simply a good way to make five minutes pass happily.

• Hopscotch. Chalk a hopscotch with a heart word in each square. Your child reads the word in every square they land on.
• Sticky-note trail. Stick a line of words from the front door to a snack. Your child reads each word to take the next step.
• Beanbag toss. Write words on paper plates and spread them on the floor. Your child tosses a beanbag, or a rolled-up pair of socks, and reads the word it lands on.
• Scavenger hunt. Hide word cards around the house, each with a small drawing on the back of where the next one is. Your child reads the word, flips the card, and runs to the next spot. The drawings let a kindergartner follow the trail without reading any clues.

Which card and board games can you turn into sight word games?

Almost any game with turns becomes a sight word game with one rule: read a card to take your turn. Keep a pile of word cards beside the board, and before each roll or move the player reads the top card aloud.

Games most families already have that adapt well:

• Snakes and ladders, or any race along a track: read a card before every roll.
• Snap: make two cards for every word. When two matching cards land, the first player to say the word wins the pile, rather than the first to shout “snap.”
• War, with a deck of playing cards: stick a heart word on each card, and a player’s card only counts once they have read it.

Play by the same rule yourself, and now and then read a card wrong on purpose for your child to catch. We name no branded games here: the rule works on whichever ones you already own, and you do not need to buy anything.

Do songs and crafts help with sight words?

Songs and crafts help when your child is looking at the word while they say it, and mostly they are a way to make five minutes pleasant. We know of no study showing that a song teaches a child to read a word, so this section is our reasoning rather than a research finding.

Songs and chants. Spelling a word out to a beat, “s-a-i-d, said!”, practices the letters in order, which is closer to spelling than to reading. It helps reading when the written word is in front of your child while they chant. Singing it with nothing to look at is learning a string of sounds.

Crafts. A few that keep the word in view:

• Rainbow writing: write the word once, then trace over it in three colors, saying it each time.
• Play dough words: roll dough into snakes, shape the letters, and read the word when it is finished.
• Salt tray: pour salt on a baking tray, write the word with a finger, say it, and shake the tray smooth.
• Word collage: cut the week’s word out of old magazines and cereal boxes. Finding the in five different typefaces helps your child learn the word as its letters rather than as one picture.

A craft that takes twenty minutes to make one card is an art project. That is fine, but it is not five minutes of reading practice.

How do you play sight word games with siblings or a group?

Handicap by word, not by rules. Give each child their own pile, from the list for their grade, so a five-year-old and an eight-year-old can share a game without one of them losing every round. Colored paper makes it easy: each child’s words go on their own color, and a player reads only their own.

• Color word hunt. Hide everyone’s sticky notes in one room. Each child hunts for their own color and reads each note aloud as they find it.
• Mixed-pile bingo. Each child’s board holds their own words, and the caller’s pile holds everyone’s. When the caller reads a word, whoever has it reads it back and covers it.
• Beat the pile together. Each child has their own stack, and turns go round the table. A card read correctly goes onto one shared pile, and a missed card goes back into its owner’s stack. Everyone wins when every stack is empty.

Cooperative games like the last one suit a big age gap, because nobody is racing anybody.

How often should you play sight word games?

Five minutes, most days, with old words mixed in with new ones. Short and frequent beats long and occasional, for the spacing reason above, and it matches the routine in how to teach sight words: five to ten minutes a day, and two or three new words a week.

• Attach it to something that already happens, like the walk home or the wait before dinner. Five minutes bolted onto an existing habit survives a busy week; a new slot in the evening does not.
• Keep old words in the pile. A word your child read correctly last week still belongs in this week’s game. A word that has faded takes almost as long to relearn as it took to learn.
• Stop while it is still fun. Ending a game your child wanted to continue is what makes them agree to it tomorrow.

For how long a word should stay in the pile, and what to do when words keep slipping, see my child can’t remember sight words.

Are sight word apps better than paper games?

A screen is better than you at three things and worse at two. It gives feedback on every word, it lets your child play alone, and it keeps practice going on the evenings you have nothing left to give.

What it cannot do is know whether a word it shows your child should have been sounded out instead. And it cannot notice guessing the way a parent at the table can: a child who reads was as “saw,” or they as “the” because it starts the same way, is telling you something an app marks as simply wrong.

The format matters less than the habit. As do reading apps work? puts it, the best method is usually the one your child will keep coming back to. So the useful arrangement is a game with you when you have five minutes, and a screen when you do not. For the screen half, best sight word apps compares nine of them on price, whether they take your child’s own list, and whether they are still updated.

What if my child hates sight word practice?

Change the game before you change anything else. A child who refuses flashcards will often play the same words as a hunt or a password.

• Let your child choose the game. The choice costs you nothing and changes how the next five minutes feel.
• Let them win more than they lose. If your child misses more cards than they read, the pile is too hard: take words out until they get most of them.
• Let them catch you. Read a card wrong on purpose and let your child correct you. Spotting the mistake feels completely different from making it.
• Never use a game as a punishment. It turns the one kind of practice your child does not resist into one they do.

If practice has turned into a fight, back off for a week, then restart with the shortest game on this page.

If your child plays happily but the words still do not stay, the games are not the problem. My child can’t remember sight words walks through the usual reasons and what to change for each.