Holiday Activities and Freebies!
Practicing sight words is an important part of literacy instruction. As students build a bank of sight word knowledge, they will be able to read with more fluency and confidence. It takes a lot of repetition with words for students to read them with automaticity. You can keep this practice fresh and engaging with these free sight word activities for kindergarten!
I’ve always liked to have a wide variety of sight word activities on hand to keep students engaged in sight word practice. I have several free printables that you can add to your own collection of sight word activities.
When students are first learning a sight word, it’s helpful to give them a chance to explore the spelling of the word. These sight word practice pages include word hunts and puzzles that help students identify and practice the correct sight word spelling.
There is also a fun printable hat for students to use! I love to use hats for learning in kindergarten because wearing one can invite students to talk about what they’re learning. When someone in the school or the pick-up line sees a student wearing a sight word hat, they will likely ask them about it. This gives the kindergartener another opportunity to say the word out loud!
If you would like to try out these practice pages, I have a set of three free printables for the sight word “get” that you can add to your rotation. Just fill out the form below and I’ll send it straight to your inbox!
Printable sight word readers can help students improve their fluency while reading sight words. These mini-books include sight words in decodable sentences that can help students build their confidence as they read each page.
In addition to the reader, there is a printable worksheet that students can use for additional fluency practice. It includes all of the sight word sentences on one page, so students can fluently read the content from the reader as one decodable passage.
You can grab the free sight word reader for the word “can” by filling out the form below. Also be sure to check out my post about printable sight word readers so you can see all of the different ways I like to use this resource in the kindergarten classroom.
Bringing a touch of seasonal fun to your sight word practice can make it more engaging for students. When students are engaged in skill practice, they are much more likely to remember what they’re learning. This is especially helpful for sight word practice! We want students to recognize sight words with automaticity, so it’s important to keep them engaged in activities that will help them build a bank of these words.
This is where games come in handy! This seasonal sight word game is perfect for the weeks leading up to Christmas. This game is editable so you can choose the sight words you’d like students to practice. All you have to do is type one sight word into one of six spaces and then the game board and cards are created automatically!
Students will take turns choosing a sight word card, identifying the word, and then placing a candy over one of the spaces with the matching word. Your students will love decorating the Christmas tree with ornaments! You can also use small manipulatives instead of candy, if that works better in your classroom.
Just fill out the form below and I’ll send this free printable sight word game straight to your inbox!
Writing sight words is another excellent way to help students become more familiar with their spelling and make it easier for them to identify those sight words. However, writing practice can be challenging for little hands! This means it can be difficult to keep them engaged in sight word writing practice.
One of my favorite ways to boost student engagement and encourage more repetitions is with rainbow writing! Students write the word in red crayon, then repeat with orange crayon, and so on until the word has been written multiple times. Students are always so excited to see the rainbow form, they forget that they’re hard at work!
If you’d like to try out rainbow writing in your classroom, you can grab this free download. Since students can easily complete this task independently, rainbow writing is perfect for centers time, morning work, and more!
The final freebie that I want to share combines reading and writing sight words into one hands-on activity. Sentence scrambles are such a fun way for students to practice sight words!
Each sight word scramble book includes several pages that use the focus sight word in a sentence. Students will cut out the words and then put them in the correct order, pasting them onto the page. They can use their knowledge of sentence conventions to help them with this task, looking for clues like the word with a capital letter and the word with punctuation mark. After assembling and reading the sentence, students can then write the correct sentence on the line. This is great fine motor practice and it also gives students more exposure to the focus sight word.
After completing all of the pages in the sentence scramble book for that focus word, they can continue to practice their sight word fluency. All of the sight words from the sentence scramble book are included on one printable page that’s perfect for assessment and fluency practice. If you’d like to try out this resource, your classroom, you can grab this free set of sentence scrambles for the word “you” by filling out the form below.
Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite Pinterest board of kindergarten activities. You’ll be able to quickly find these free printables when you’re looking for engaging ways to practice sight words in your classroom.
