Four Favorite Sight Word Games for my Pre-K er

Before having kids I was a fifth grade teacher.  By fifth grade kids obviously know their sight words so I never had to teach that skill until I had my very own Pre-K kiddo that wanted to learn how to read.  I made a ton of flash cards and drilled her but she hated it.  How could we make learning sight words more fun?

These are our four favorite game to play right now as we get ready for Kindergarten next year.  They are all fun to play and don't involve technology.

# 1 THE LETTER BALL:

I know, I said sight words but hear me out.  You toss the ball back and forth and try to say a word or name that starts with the letter that your thumb is closest to.  Since my daughter has two thumbs I let her choose which one she wants to use.  No repeats allowed- so once she says Katie she has to come up with something new.  We like this game because it is fun to play catch and it teaches kids to listen for the beginning sound in a word.  So if she sees a word like BIG she can look at the letter sounds and try to sound it out until she commits it to memory.

# 2 SIGHT WORD GO FISH

I think this game has helped the most to learn her sight words.  She loves to play go fish and now instead of cards with random pictures we use words.  I cut out cards and hand wrote the words on them.  I used all capital letters, all lower case letters, and first letter capital rest lower case.  Why?  I figured in reading she would see words written all different ways and would still need to know that it was the same word.  You could also do them all the same or just do letter go fish.  When we play I ask her the word and show it to her so she sees and hears the word.  Even if she doesn't know a word in her hand she can show me and I just say, nope I don't have a me, go fish.  I try to never point out- oh you have me, thats a me.  It is supposed to be fun.  

# 3 SIGHT WORD BINGO

I chose about 20 sight words and made up some BINGO cards (I cut a piece of card stock in half)  We use cheerios as markers.  This game is more fun with multiple people, so we have my one year old play too.  He likes to eat the cheerios, but it is still fun.  

# 4 ROLL A SIGHT WORD:

We have just started playing this game.  We roll the dice and whatever number you get you have to find a word on the list with that many letters.  Bonus points for this game since it involves math skills too- counting dice spots and letters and writing skills- it is hard to write those long words in the small spaces.  We use the same list over and over again to learn all of the words.  Once you used a word you cross it off so it cant be used again.  Sometimes I ask my daughter to try to use the word in a sentence, but I don't push it if she doesn't want too because it is supposed to be fun.  If you notice there are only two six letter words and two one letter words, so once they are used if you roll a six or a one you are out of luck.  Then we tally up who got to write the most words.

I use this as my word list

I use this as the page to write the words

So those are my four favorite games for my four year old to learn her sight words.  Am I missing anything great?  I am always looking for new ways to teach my daughter without using apps.