Are you looking for a fun way to help your students practice sight words at the end of the school year or during summer vacation? You should try summer sight word mystery pictures! This fun coloring activity is always a hit with students. They’ll be excited to practice sight words with this engaging printable activity.
What Are Mystery Pictures?
I began creating mystery pictures for my students when I noticed how much they loved puzzles and coloring. I thought it would be fun to combine the two in order to create a fun way to practice literacy and math skills.
Sight word mystery pictures include a blank grid with a sight word written in each box. There is a key on one side of the page where students can practice writing each sight word before coloring each box according to the key.
As students color in each box of the grid, a picture starts to emerge. Students are always so excited to try and make out the picture with each box they color! Mystery pictures are definitely one of the most popular printables enjoyed by my students over the years.
How to Create Summer Sight Word Mystery Pictures
It’s very easy to create your own summer sight word mystery pictures! I have created editable templates that are easy to customize for your students.
Step One: Enter Your Words
The first step is to decide what words you’d like your students to practice. These can be sight words that fit a particular theme or that focus on a specific phonics skill. You can use any words you’d like!
Once you’ve decided on the words, just type them into the boxes of the editable PDF. You don’t need to worry about word length, since the letters will resize to fit in the boxes.
Step Two: Preview
After entering the words on the form, you can preview what the mystery picture will look like with the words in each box.
Step Three: Print
If everything looks great, you just need to print and it will be ready to go! You can choose to print one mystery picture at a time or print enough for a sight word review packet. Either way, your students will love this engaging sight word practice activity!
7 Ways to Use Summer Sight Word Mystery Pictures
There are so many ways that you can use these fun mystery pictures in your classroom! You can decide what works best for you and your students.
1. Morning Work
Mystery pictures are a fun way to get your students warmed up for a day of learning. This is very helpful at the end of the school year when energy levels are high and motivation is low. It’s helpful to start the day with an engaging activity that grabs students’ attention right away!
2. Emergency Sub Plans
It’s always nice to have some engaging activities on hand for emergency sub plans. It never fails that a spring illness makes its way through the school in the last few weeks of the school year. Sight word mystery pictures are the perfect addition to your last-minute sub plans, since the instructions are simple and students are always so excited to work on them!
3. Literacy Centers
Are you trying to keep your centers rotation going as long as possible at the end of the year? The familiar routine of centers can be so helpful for students during the last few weeks of school! These sight word mystery pictures can add a touch of summer fun to your learning stations! This is a great way to keep students engaged during independent work time.
4. Early Finishers
You can keep a stack of sight word mystery pictures on hand for your early finishers to choose from. They can quietly work on something fun and engaging while they wait for the next classroom activity to begin. Since it can take several sittings to fill in all of the boxes, students could keep a packet of mystery pictures in their desk for whenever they have extra time.
5. Flexible Learning Activity
The end of the school year is jam-packed with special events and schedule changes! It’s always nice to have some simple activities printed and ready to go when you find yourself with an unexpected pocket of time.
6. Last Day of School Party
Are you planning to have a party with your students on the last day of school? A coloring activity is great way to bring some summer-themed skill practice to your classroom festivities. You’ll be able to give your students one last chance to review sight words before they head home for the summer.
7. Engaging Summer Review
Speaking of heading home for the summer, you can add sight word mystery pictures to your students’ kindergarten review packets! Since students love these activities so much, they’re much more likely to reach for them throughout the summer. These coloring activities are perfect for long car rides or rainy summer days in the house! No matter how parents choose to use these summer review activities, it’s always nice when we can give our students to keep those skills sharp for first grade!
Printable Summer Sight Word Mystery Pictures
Would you like to use engaging mystery pictures for your end-of-the-year lesson plans or summer review? I have created a set of editable mystery pictures that will make it easy for you to put together this activity in no time!
This set of summer sight word mystery pictures includes three different pictures that are completely customizable. All you have to do it is type in the words once and the puzzle is created instantly!
If you’d like to take a closer look at this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
Save This Summer Sight Word Activity
Be sure to save this post so you can find it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find this summer sight word mystery picture when you’re looking for engaging activities to add to your lesson plans or summer review packet.