Well can you believe my little darlings are still not in school? I feel like the last man standing here as we have one more week of summer vacation.
I have really been cramming in the sight word practice for both my 5 year old and 7 year old the past few weeks so they are fresh and ready to start school.
But you can only do flashcards and writing it out and spelling aloud so many times and it gets so boring for them. So I decided to have a little fun with some words and make it a game to try to get them interested in learning.
If you have little ones that are trying to memorize lists of sight words, this might be something you consider trying with your kiddos.
I just wrote out different words in sidewalk chalk right on the driveway. My 2nd grader had a different set of words then my Kindergartner (obviously) and in the middle I listed their names to keep track of how many they got right.
Each little Miss got a squirt gun and took turns as I randomly called out a word. They had to identify the word and soak it with the gun to earn a point. If they missed the word or weren’t sure about it they lost the point.
We are not above bribery around these parts so I had very high stakes involved (Skittles!) and I have to say this is our first homework session in a VERY long time that was actually fun and didn’t involve whining, arguing, pleading (me!), crying (me!) or yelling (ahem… me!)
In fact the girls asked to keep going so we did a few rounds of word identification. We actually practiced far more words then we normally do sitting at the dining room table with flashcards and such.
I think I might play with this idea a bit more and maybe next time they need to write out the words themselves in chalk and if they get it wrong I get to squirt them. (Lol- just kidding!)
If you give this a shot with your kiddos please come back and let me know how it goes for you!
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Such a fun idea! I am on round number four of teaching kindergarten sight words, and I think I will give this a try. My other kids got so bored with this! My son will love it, thanks so much!
Brilliant! Doing this tonight!!
Thank you so much Sarah 🙂 I hope your kids have fun and maybe pick up a few words 😉