How do you reinforce sight words with your child? In the UK (as in other parts of the world) children are taught a 'bank' of sight words to support reading along side learning synthetic phonetic (how to break down/ blend sounds to make words). Learning new words can take lots of exposure.
The Fairy isn't always keen to just look at the words (and frankly neither am I - it is a bit boring) . So after asking for advice on 'The Fairy and The Frog' Facebook page I decided to shake things up (literally) by making a discovery bottle. By the way if you've not liked us over at Facebook please stop by and say hello we love having new followers just click here to find us.
We made a sight word discovery bottle with an winter theme (chosen by the Fairy- I was surprised because I thought she'd automatically go for something pink related but obviously not). Discovery bottles are not a new idea (we've made lots before including our autumn discovery bottle) there are lots of examples on pinterest of people using them to support sight word learning including this one.
We made the discovery by adding some sight words (which I laminated to make stronger - this is optional) to a clean plastic bottle with some rice. The Fairy then selected 'cold' sequins from our 'sparkle jar'. Make sure you close the bottle tightly so little fingers can't open it (you may like to seal with glue to make extra sure). Juice/ smoothie bottles tend to have wider necks so they can be easier to add bits to.
The words get hidden in the rice and sequins (as demonstrated here by The Frog who has temporally 'borrowed' the bottle whilst his big sis is at school). When you shake the bottle the words come to the surface. To help her use the bottle I designed a sheet on picmonkey adding some cold looking snowflakes (if you haven't already found it s a great photo editing website). The Fairy uses a felt tip to tick the words she can find and can read, She also circles the ones she's not sure about (I've laminated the sheet to make it reusable) so she can ask us to help her. This promotes independence and willingness to practice.
Fantastic - I'm hunting down sight word activities and J will love this (our words are starting to get a little more taxing now). I've pinned to my sigh words board.
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