Sight Word Surprise

Happy Wednesday, everybody!  The reason I called this post "Sight Word Surprise" is because I went to a super website today that's totally free and has tons of fantastic sight word games for either your classroom or to use at home with your own children.  There are customizable Bingo games, Snakes and Ladders games, Go Fish games, and much more.  It's a really cool site and truly brightened my Wednesday!

Super Sight Word Bingo

Playing Sight Word Bingo with my students

Hi everyone!  I don't know if I mentioned that I'm teaching summer school this year, but today I have off for the 4th of July.  I know, you probably think I'm crazy, but I really wanted to teach summer school because I only have ten children in each group, I get to teach reading (which I love), and it's only 4 days a week.  Beside all of that, I really wanted to buy hardwood floors for our living room and dining room at home.  Our rug is disgustingly old!

Anyway, I started thinking about the children I have in my summer school class who don't know all their sight words.  So of course I'm going to be using all the modalities to try and really get them to feel, see, and hear them before they're off to the land of first grade.  We've been singing "Popcorn Words" by Jack Hartmann and "Singing the Word Wall" by Dr. Jean, and having a good time writing sight words in sand.

My "Sight Word Bingo" game

This week, I made a really beautiful Sight Word Bingo Game.  I decided to make it so it would be beneficial for the lower kids, the middle kids, and the higher kids in the summer school class.  I used 30 of our kindergarten sight words and 10 more from first grade.  I also thought of complete sentences that would use each sight word, to help the children to make connections to the real world.  To flesh out these sentences I added words such as "cat", "dog", "fish", etc. that are easy to sound out.  I tried it out this week with the kids, and they really enjoyed it.  Ok, you might ask me how I know they enjoyed it.  Well, the second day that I pulled it out, they started yelling out "Yay!  Bingo!", "I want to be blue!", "I want to be red!".  I was really pleasantly surprised because I thought it would be difficult to get the kids out of centers.  I think adding the color choices to the player boards helps them to become engaged from the start of the game.

Please let me know what you think about this game, and any suggestions you have to make it better.  Solid Bingo is coming soon!