Sight Word Fishing
It’s Day 4 of our 30 Days of Reading Fun for Beginning Readers series. On Wednesdays during this series we will be focusing on sight words and/or vocabulary. This Sight Word Fishing activity is super fun and extremely versatile. Once you have created the “fish”, you can use them again and again!
Sight words, also known as “high-frequency words”, are the most common words children will encounter when learning to read and often do not follow phonics rules. Because of this, I recommend helping your child memorize sight words that cannot be decoded using the basic phonics rules (I call these “cheater” words because they don’t play fair). Simple games like these make memorizing sight words more fun and interactive!
Here’s what you’ll need for Sight Word Fishing:
Construction Paper
Hot Glue Gun
Metal lids from canned goods
String
Dowel Rod (or something similar)
Dry-Erase Marker
Blue Felt (Optional)
1. Cut fish shapes out of construction paper (make sure you have an identical front and back) and run the fish through the laminator. Although this step is technically optional, they will hold up much better if they are laminated. If you don’t have a laminator, you might consider covering the fish with packing tape.
2. Use your hot glue gun to hot glue a metal lid in between the two identical fish. Once you have it secured to one fish, add more hot glue and add the other fish on top (the metal lid will be the “meat” in your sandwich).
3. Use your dry erase marker to add the sight words to your fish. (Go here for a list of Dolch sight words.) Make sure you write the words on both sides. You can also use a permanent marker, which won’t rub off as easily.
4. Tie your horseshoe magnet to some yarn and attach to the dowel rod (or curtain rod in my case, as I couldn’t find a dowel rod at our house).
5. Cut out a piece of blue felt to be your pond (or better yet, put the fish in a baby pool).
6. Let your child start fishing!
Go here for more beginning reader activities:
