Early Literacy: Sight Words

I recently noticed that the number of words Eva is able to recognize and spell has been increasing.  For a while she knew her name and ours and that was about it (besides boo which she has hung onto since Halloween).  Now she is noticing more words in the environment and starting to hold on to them.

While she can read and spell them, she does not know how to write them yet.  (The only word I've actually taught her how to write is "love" so that she could sign birthday cards for family members.)  The other day I sat down with her and wrote down the words she can both read and spell to make a chart to help her learn to write those words.

I hung it from one of our window shades and left some sentence strips and markers for her to use to write when the mood strikes her.  She grabs the word she wants to write and sets it above her sentence strip for a reference.

I love finding her "writings" and knowing that she has embraced this and done it on her own.

Some other things we do with her little word wall are:

• use a pointer to point and read the words
• I say a word and Eva points to it
• take the words out and spread them on the table then Eva closes her eyes and I hide a sticker under one of the words; she then has to read a word and then look under it to try and find the prize
• trace the words with her finger
• take a word and make it with magnetic letters
• take a word and stamp it with alphabet stamps

As she learns new words I'll remove some of the really well known ones and put the new ones in their place.