Help Teach Sight Words - Helping Your Child Learn to Read

Learning to read is one of the most basic and essential skills a child will need to master to be able to succeed in school. As your child moves from learning the alphabet to putting words together, the teacher will probably send home sight word lists that the class is working on during the school day. When you help your child review them at home, he or she will learn sight words more quickly. (If you are homeschooling your child, you may want to use the Dolch sight word lists, which are available on several websites or through a used copy of Dolch's sight word book.)

 One of my children actually brought home little groups of sight word cards on a ring. It was really a nice way to keep the cards organized so she could find them when it was time to review them. You can make your own cards pretty easily if they aren't provided by the teacher. There are a ton of free flashcard makers online, but I just printed each word neatly on an index card with my black Sharpie marker and it worked just fine.

 We were able to find beginning readers for different word families in the library and read them together. If you can't find books that have your child's sight words in them or if the books you find are too hard, why not try writing a simple story together? I still remember a story we wrote and illustrated a few years ago called, "Dan Has a Tan Van." Building memories and vocabularies at the same time? It doesn't get much better than that!

 Most sight words are used pretty frequently. While sitting in a waiting room today, I saw the words you, go, wait, in, for, to and the. Those are all sight words on the list my youngest is learning. If he was hanging out with me instead of being in school, I'd be asking him what the different words were.

As you review sight words at home with your child, he or she should be able to master them more quickly than if you depended on a teacher to teach the sight words in school without any help at home. Getting that solid foundation is essential for your child's success throughout his or her school career!