We are hard at work learning “popcorn words”. Davey’s teacher sent home his first list of sight words a couple of weeks ago. It is incredible to me how much he has learned in just a few weeks of school. Three weeks ago this was absolutely new to him. Three weeks later, it’s all getting so much easier. When he is comfortable with the words, he will go over them with her, and then she will send home another list (I suppose kindergarteners the world over do this, but it’s all new stuff to me!).
I, Like, Go, To, On, Me, My, A, The, Is. This first list of words may be forever etched onto my brain.
We have played several games to help him learn these words. I now have a whole Pinterest board devoted to sight word games. Pinterest is Amazing. There will be so many great ideas there to help me teach someday as well.
The magic word game was a big hit. Thanks to my friend Carol for showing me that one (she was my teacher too when I was in elementary school!). I made sentences with his sight words and worked them into a treasure hunt. I took a white crayon and wrote the sentences on a white piece of paper. Then Davey colored over the letters with a marker. The coloring got a little tedious for him (he has never been a big coloring fan), so I helped him color after awhile, but then he figured out the words.
He very much enjoyed figuring out the clues. He also got to where he was figuring out words by a combination of using the context and sounding them out abit. For example, he figured out the word boy in that way. It is an amazing process really – this learning to read thing.
Another fun one was a word treasure hunt. I hid words around the house and he looked for them. Every time he found one, he checked it off on his list, and he told me what it was. He liked that a lot too.
Every time we played a game, he’d continue it, so for example, he spent quite abit of time writing out his own clues and coloring over them.
He was having a heck of a time remembering the word “the”. So I figured out a way to help I think. I’d write a sentence – oh and I bought a $1.00 dry erase board at the Dollar Tree. Best investment ever. We are using it constantly to practice. So I wrote the sentence: “Davey is a boy.” He could read that. Then I’d say “Ok wait. Davey is not A boy. He is THE boy! Davey is THE boy!” Davey found this hilarious and we did many variations on this. “Buster is not A dog. Buster is THE dog!”, and “Mama is not a Mommy. She is THE Mommy.” We added lots of expression and emphasis when we switched back and forth between “a” and “the”. I think it worked well because he is not having trouble with the word “the” at all now.
So he just about has them all learned. He just read through them with no mistakes and with very little hesitation. Yay Davey. 🙂
We are all off today and are enjoying a nice afternoon at home. David and Davey have been building with Legos for awhile. I just finished a couple of short papers. I finished reading a book (Into the Wild – really good). I think it’s time to knit.
Cpeezers 