Learning Sight Words - Reading

Like most parents, I encourage reading in our house.  Alex (almost 4 1/2) is doing very well at reading and I think the way that we have done sight words in our house has helped that along so I thought I'd share it.

I bought a couple of packages of colored index cards and some large binder rings.  I then split the cards up by color and randomly just started writing words on them.  I suppose I could have done them in alphabetical order, but I just went down the list.  Laminating them would also be a good idea.

I then punched each of the cards and bound them with the rings so that each color was in its own bunch.

Now comes the part as to why I feel this is effective.  Before bed, HE gets to pick the color HE wants.  Ah, control and choice to a toddler is like a moth to a flame.  We do one color batch a night along with a story or two.  It is really exciting to see that he actually is reading the words and not just memorizing them.

I started doing sight words with him last summer, before that we concentrated on letter recognition (big and small) and letter sounds.  Here is the list I recommend obtaining your sight words from 

dolch-word-list

In addition to that, we also included cards with

• family member names (dad, mom, Cameron)
• pet names
• friends names
• address
• city
• state
• country

Of course the No. 1 way to get your kids reading is to READ READ READ!