As a teacher I see this all the time, and have found three categories of activities that are helpful:<br><br>
1) Kinesthetic activities (fancy teacher speak for activities where the child is moving) such as writing the words, building the letters/words out of playdough, fingerpainting the words in finger paint or pudding or shaving cream, writing the words in sidewalk chalk on the squares of game of hopscotch and spelling the word aloud each time you jump on it, play tic tac toe only instead of x and o one of you writes "is" in your square while the other writes "the", etc . . .<br><br>
2) Activities where the child has to hold the details of the word in short term memory for a period of time.<br><br>
For example: hang the flash cards on the fridge, then go into another room and show your child a flash card, if need be tell them the word and then ask them to go into the kitchen and bring you back the matching flashcard from the fridge, but don't let them take the first card with them -- talk to them about the ways they can remember both the word and how to spell it while they go such as whisper the letters under the breath, remember a really noticeable feature (look has two circles that look like eyeballs in the middle, so chant "look look look" while you're looking for those eyeballs) then come back and show you matching flashcard and read it.<br><br>
Another example: play go fish with the flash cards. Have her leave her cards face down on the table instead of in her hand (easier for K kids anyway). Show her your card and say "this word is go, Do you have go" and have her look at it, and then put it back in your hand before she looks for it -- again if she needs help talk to her about how she's going to remember what word she's looking for.<br><br>
3) Activities that help kids use phonics strategies to attack sight words -- kids memory banks at this age are often like giant huge messy filing cabinets -- somewhere deep in there is the knowledge that w-i-t-h spells with, but they can't always pull it up. If you remind your daughter to look at the first letter, and make that sound with her lips while she tries to remember it, you're eliminating 25/26 of the drawers she needs to look in -- this is particularly helpful for those kids that look at a card and guess words that have none of the same sounds, or kids that look at a word in a book and say "I know that word! It's on the word wall in green ink" but they can't tell you what it is.<br><br>
An example of this would be to spread the 10 new words out in front of her and say "I'm going to read you a word and I want you to find it, I know you don't recognize all of them yet, but I want you to think like a detective and figure out which one it could be" Then say "here" and talk her through the fact that you're going to want to find a word that starts with h, and Oh, yeah you hear an r in there somewhere too, which of the three h words (imagine how, here, and he) could be here.<br><br>
Another example: Play the game "Don't be greedy" make (have her make with you) a stack of cards with a bunch for each word, also make some cards with a smiley face (I make mine with a Cheshire Cat style smile) that are "greedy" cards. Shuffle the cards, and put them in a stack. The first player goes first and draws a card, reads it and adds it to her deck -- then they can decide if they want another card, if they draw another card and it's a word they can read it and keep it, if it's a greedy card they have to give their entire stack back. The trick though is that she needs to watch you as you read your words because if you read a word wrong and she catches you you have to give HER your card (or cards, depends on how you want to play). She doesn't need to be able to read the word to know you read it wrong, she can just say "that can't be he it starts with a T". I often play this game in a silly way, where I try and catch the child back, only really I'm helping them -- so when I see that searching look in their face I'll accidentally blurt out a word and then slap my hand over my face like I'm sooo disappointed that I helped them, or I'll chant under my breath "don't say is, don't say is" and then be shocked that they "heard me" and figured out that the word was is. If you have a child who does a lot of impulsive guessing without stopping to think you can also make a rule that "if you say it wrong I get it, but if you ask for help I'm happy to help you figure it out". One good thing about this game is that it leads to discussions -- e.g. the child says "that can't be the, the doesn't have a T sound" and you can explain who t and h get together to make a different sound. Another good thing about this game is that when the words are new and you want them to spend a lot of time watching and listening you can make sure that every time it's your turn you draw and draw until you get a greedy card (and throw a minor tantrum to amuse them), or if they're at a later stage and you want them to do most of the reading you can only draw one card every time even late in the game when the greedy cards are all gone and drawing a lot of cards is the winning strategy -- that way they're reading a lot and you're reading a little. Either way you're bound to lose.<br><br>
Sometimes the very best activities are ones that combine 2 or 3 of these. For example:<br><br>
Play the game where she looks in the other room for the word, only instead of having her bring back the flash card, have her copy down the word and bring it back that back to you.<br><br>
Play Go Fish and keep a running list of who got which words which she writes (best of all, have her write it on a "paper" made of very thin sheet of clay with a sharpish stick -- the clay will slow her down as she writes and make her need to concentrate) stop frequently and compare lists say "listen to how long my list is (doesn't hurt to throw the game so her list is longer -- Go Fish is a very easy game to lose on purpose) and then have her read her list to you -- encourage her to use phonics strategies if she gets stuck.<br><br>
Give her a pair of scissors and a magazine -- show her a word, figure out together what it says, and then hide the word and have her find it in the magazine, cut it out, and paste it on a piece of paper.<br>
Make the Go Fish cards together, you make one she makes one so she gets the kinesthetic input too -- in my small groups that I work with we almost always make the cards and then I send them home -- we probably spend 20 minutes making them and 5 minutes playing them but all they remember is "I made a game with Ms. G.".<br><br>
Take out 2 or 3 flashcards and show them to her, tell her what they are and have her copy them across the top of a piece of paper. Tell her a silly sentence that contains one word and either (depending on her writing ability) have her write the sentence ("invented spelling" is great here except for the actual 2 or 3 words you're asking her to spell right) or you write the sentence and stop when you get to the word, and then ask her to find the sight word and copy it down -- if she can't do that then use the phonics strategies above to help her find it.<br><br>
Good luck!
