Sight Word Activities for Home

Inside: These sight word activities include active learning ideas, sight word games, printable activities, engaging worksheets, and tips for teaching high-frequency words at home.

As I write this, I know lots of families are stuck at home and want to work on sight words with their preschooler or kindergartner. They need motivating ideas that will make it easy to win participation.

Ta-da! Here is a big list of ideas to the rescue. There’s no whining with this fun group of sight word activities!

Plus, I’ve chosen activities that will work easily at home. In fact, some of these will work better one-on-one with parent and child.

Creative and Active Sight Word Activities

These hands-on sight word activities take a little more parent involvement than those in the next section, but they’re great for reluctant learners, kids brand new to learning sight words, or families that have some spare play-to-learn time.

Clockwise from the top left:

These Sight Word Stamps are a creative, hands-on way to practice spelling and reading high-frequency words. 

A Rainbow Salt Tray is another fun way to include sight word activities into your child’s day.

Grab your chalk and head outside to practice reading with this chalk sight word game, or with this one. Learning to read sight words has never been more fun!

Instead of using flashcards, turn your child’s sight words into a fun sight word popsicle stick game. Then, bump it up another notch with this cute variation.

Kids who need extra motivation to practice their sight word flashcards will adore playing these sight word monster games! Alternatively, this similar feed-the-dog sight word game looks easy to prep.

Clockwise from the top left:

Hands-on basketball-themed play is in store with this ball themed sight word activity. I think you could easily sub in makeshift materials for this at home if needed.

Water plus sharks equal a whole lot of sight word fun with this shark sight word activity. (And for home learning, if you can’t get foam sheets right now, try a foam produce container or an old blue plastic folder or notebook cover.)

Sight Word Splash is a water play game to teach or review words. It’s perfect for summer learning fun!

Practice reading sight words with this fun game that’ll get kiddos moving!

Create this super fun sight word and alphabet game with glass gems for your child. It’s easy to make and has lots of learning ideas.

Not pictured:

I found this post late, but love it so much I want to include it. It’s a sight word activity using little toy cars. My son loved this kind of thing when he was in kindergarten!

Finally, I remembered I have a blog post about pretend play with plastic animals and sight word flashcards.

Sight Word Printables & Worksheets

Once kiddos have reached the stage of being able to retain words more quickly, these sight word worksheets and printable activities are a suitable choice. I tried to choose ideas that are playful yet easy on working parents too.

Clockwise from the top left:

If your kids love stamp markers, they’ll love working on sight words with the engaging stamp marker sight word (and alphabet) worksheets in my store. They’re a fun fine motor activity too!

These kindergarten sight word mazes, also in my store, give students practice recognizing and writing 50 different sight words.

You can turn this ocean theme free printable into a fun Fry word fishing game.

I love how these sight word matching worksheets have kids rhyming sight words – it’s a great way to incorporate phonics into high-frequency word study.

Ahoy, matey! Hide some sight word treasure with these fun pre-primer sight word printables that combine initial sound practice with sight word study.

Clockwise from the top left:

Help kids work on visual discrimination as they read sight words to complete these Free Color by Sight Word Worksheets with a fun Little Mermaid theme!

(not pictured) These pretty Nature Color by Sight Word Worksheets are another fun free printable option.

All Aboard! Kids will have fun practicing sight words with this fun, and free, Train Sight Words Game for young learners.

This sight words memory game is an awesome hands-on activity for learning & practicing sight words. I love that this set is color-coded by level and includes instructions for several different activities.

This rainbow four in a row game is editable so you can use easily type in any sight words you want to work on. There is strategy involved, so parents and kids will have a blast playing!

I love this fun beehive sight word bingo game! It comes in PreK to 2nd grade versions.

Tips for Working on Sight Words

Finally, I want to share some ideas and background that might help families support their child’s sight word journey…

These 7 tips for sight word practice will get your kids engaged and improve their retention of the sight words you’re working on.

If your child is struggling to learn sight words, you might find this post about how children typically progress in their sight word learning, from being able to memorize just one or two words to being able to learn sight words more rapidly.

Lastly, if you want an in-depth understanding of the educational theory here, you may like to read this thorough, research-based introduction to teaching sight words.

Most importantly, with whatever sight word activities you choose, make sure your child has fun! This is one of their first experiences with reading, and you want to make sure it is a positive one.

Happy Teaching,

Heather