We’ve been doing a bunch of fun sight words in the past few months and here, you will find all of our favorite sight word activities for kindergarten. This is a collection of all of our sight word activities, or multisensory learning activities focused on reading skills. The best thing about these hands-on reading activities is that they can be used for sight words as well as decodable words. These multisensory reading activities are perfect for beginning reading for kindergarten. Learning and practicing sight words can be fun, creative, and NOT include just repetition with flash cards. A little creativity and lot of fun are happening on this page. Get ready to learn through play. And have fun!
{Note: This post contains affiliate links.}
Creative Ways to Practice Kindergarten Sight Words
Sight Words and Decodable Words
When my older kids were learning to read, they came home with lists of “sight words”. They also came home with small stapled books where they inserted the sight word into sentences driven by pictures. They were “reading the pictures”.
Since then, sight words have shifted slightly to include common lists, but more of the decodable reading.
These hands on activities can be used with any early reading!
Sight words are not necessarily always irregular words. They may only be taught as sight words until the sounds in the word have been taught… then it becomes decidable.
Some sight words are truly words that are known by sight…there is no way to sound them out. Other sight words can be decoded.
High frequency words and not words that can be learned through decoding. For example… “what” is a sight word and should be learned as such.
Multisensory Reading Activities
The multisensory reading activities listed below incorporate whole body movement, heavy work input, and even vestibular input. These are just SOME ways to use all of our senses in learning high frequency words.
Other multisensory reading strategies can be used to decode parts of a word, or even sight words that are decodable. This is done by breaking apart the sounds that make up the word, or orthographically mapping the word.
Other multisensory reading strategies include:
- pounding words and parts of words
- tapping of words
- moving cubes
- moving chips or manipulatives like mini erasers or balls of play dough for sounds
- using a red word/heart word for the tricky part of a “trick word” or sight word
- spelling and arm tapping
- writing on a bumpy screen and then feeling the bumps while spelling it aloud
- sky writing (crossing the midline)
- writing words on the palm
- writing on a foam sheet
- Check out all of our ideas and strategies for name practice for kindergarten
The multisensory reading strategies below are creative ways to work on sight words
Use fun materials like ping pong balls like we did in our Sight Words Ping Pong Bounce Game. (That was an activity that Little Guy LOVED…and he’s not even learning sight words yet! Use those ping pong balls again for Sight Word Scooping and incorporate fine motor skills into sentence building.
Something that you find in the junk drawer can be a learning tool. String! We used string to review sight words in Creative Sight Word Practice with String.
Creative Sight Work Activities for Kindergarten
The senses are an essential part of daily life. Incorporate the senses into learning with a few fun ideas:
- Try a Sight Word Sensory Bin.
- Another fun idea is using a sensory bottle to engage new readers.
- I Spy Sight Word Sensory Bottle is a great way to calmly practice new words.
- You can also go with the mess-free version of sensory input with No-Mess Sensory Sight Word Spelling.
- Work on fine motor skills while practicing beginner sight words with a letter match.
- This one went along with the book Bears on Wheels
by Stan Berenstain. Sight Word Manipulatives used the same sight word cards in a hands-on learning activity.
We got moving with our Word Scavenger Hunt.
More movement based learning happened when we incorporated the easel in Sight Word Sticky Easel.
A few more creative ways to learn: Does your Kindergartener love all things art? Try some stamping with Sight Word Bottle Cap Stampers.
We hope you’ve found some fun ways to learn and play with sight words with this list. Stop back often, because we’re adding new activities all the time. We’ll be sure to update this page with all of our latest sight word activities.
Need more ways to develop skills through play? Grab one of our Fine Motor Kits!
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:
- Frogs Fine Motor Kit
- Unicorns Fine Motor Kit
- Vehicles Fine Motor Kit
- Apple Fine Motor Kit
- Back to School Kit
- Sports Fine Motor Kit
- Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
- Fairytale Fine Motor Kit
- Plus more in our shop!
Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
1 thought on “Creative Sight Word Activities for Kindergarten”
Great ideas! I really like the scavenger hunt. So fun!
Comments are closed.