Step Up Your GAME! More Sight Word Fun.

You’ll have your child begging to practice their sight words with these two games. My daughter KC loves them so much that she has them all set up at the table each morning before I’m even done making her breakfast.

These games are great to play leading up to our annual Easter egg hunt.  We’ve shown you how to introduce sight words leading up to Easter and how to write clues using these sight words to send your child on a scavenger hunt from one egg to the next and eventually an Easter basket! Clues like “Go to the c___.” (couch) or “Look in the f___.” (fridge) will excite your little one when they are prepared and able to read them on their own!

 

1.  Sight Word Mighty Maid

This is played similar to Old Maid but uses sight words and a mighty maid instead of numbers and an old maid. The goal of this card game is to avoid getting the mighty maid card (although it can be so fun that your child may still get a kick out of being left with her!).

I’m lucky enough that my mom showed up the other day with this game in her purse. She found this and other fun games at sightwordsgame.com. AND it’s super easy for you to create it at home too!

What you need:

  • List of sight words your child knows or is working on
  • Index cards (or blank paper to tape to an old deck of cards if you prefer)
  • Scissors
  • Glue stick
  • Pen (It is important that the pen not show through the card)
  • Printer (To print mighty maid card, otherwise you can draw your own)

Cut your index cards into smaller size cards (for little hands as they learn to fan their cards out). I suggest cutting each 1 card in half.

Write each sight word on two separate index cards. You’ll want to use the words your child knows. If you’ve been following along with us then these words currently include go, to, the, look, at, in, my, I, ais.

Print a mighty maid card from sightwordsgame.com and glue her to the back of one of your index cards. (We did not use the other sight word card templates available from their site only because they aren’t the same sight words we’ve worked on so far.)

Depending upon your child’s reading readiness, select an appropriate number of pairs to play with as well as one mighty maid card. You can always break your sight words up into multiple games if needed. We started using 4 pair per game.

Keep this game close by to play whenever you have a few minutes! Repetition is Key. Playing it a lot with your child will help reinforce automatic recognition of these sight words.

How to Play Mighty Maid

mightymaiJust like in the game Old Maid, the object here is to avoid holding the mighty maid card at the end of the game. Deal out all of the mighty maid game cards. They are all sight words your child knows. Pick your cards up (but don’t let the other player see them) and put any pairs face up on the table. Explain that a pair is two of the same, like two socks or two mittens. Each time a pair is put down, read the sight word aloud, spell it, and slide a finger under as it’s read aloud again. Your child takes one card from you, checks for a match in their own cards, and places it on the table if they have a pair. Again, they’ll spell out the sight word and slide a finger under as they read the word aloud. The mighty maid might go back and forth throughout the game, but after all the sight word pairs have been placed on the table, the person left with the mighty maid card looses the game.

 

2.  Sight Word Bingo

Who doesn’t love Bingo? Am I right? KC gets a kick out of playing Bingo at home ever since she played Bingo with her cousins by the snack bar at a lake we went to last summer and she won some free fries!

What you need:

  • List of sight words your child knows or is working on
  • Blank paper (for Bingo cards)
  • Index cards
  • Scissors
  • Pen
  • Ruler

Create 4 Bingo cards with three squares across and three squares down. (As a game this small starts to go quickly, then you could eventually have four across and four down or even more).

2 Bingo cards will be used for Game 1, and the remaining 2 Bingo cards will be used for Game 2.

Write 8 sight words from the words your child knows (go, to, the, look, at, in, my, I, a, is) in the squares on your Game 1 cards. Be sure to write the sight words in different boxes on each card so that these cards are not identical. Then write 8 words in the squares on your Game 2 cards. Be sure to use any of the sight words that were not included in Game 1, and remember to mix them up on each card so that the cards are not identical.

Cut your index cards into smaller size cards. I suggest cutting each 1 card in half. These will be used for your deck of cards.

Write each sight word on the index cards. Separate and label this deck of cards into Game 1 and Game 2, based on which sight words you chose for each game.

How to Play Bingo

This game of Bingo uses sight words rather than numbers and letters. Put a marker in your Free Space. Place the deck of cards upside down. Flip one over. Read it, spell it, and slide a finger under it as it’s read again. Put a marker on the space with that sight word if you have it. Flip the next card over from the top of the deck and repeat until one player gets a Bingo (3 across, down, or diagonal). Winner yells “Bingo!”

 

“Easy peasy!” as KC likes to say. Simple to make. Lots of fun to play and learn together! The more you play, the quicker your child will recognize their sight words by sight.

 

xoxo, @lifeasallison

p.s.

Please feel free to get creative with more games to practice your sight words! We have a set of alphabet stamps that we use to spell out our sight words on a blank piece of paper. Kids love stamping and will love to show off how to spell and read the new sight words they’ve learned! 

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