Love Learning

This page is dedicated to learning games and resources for kids starting Kindergarten and Year One.

 KINDERGARTEN

We were first introduced to Sight Words or (High Frequently Words) when She-Who-Worships-Pink began Kindergarten.
Simply put it's a word list, compiled by Edward William Dolch, PhD, and the foundation of his "whole-word" method of beginning reading instruction.

First year homework in Big School all revolves around sight words and there are 100 of them! (Just to begin with) So be prepared to knuckle down and get creative.
 Mrs Crawford's Class is an excellent resource.

Pinkster and I however, have created some of our own games and by far the most popular, with her Kindy teacher and her class mates, was this one;

Sight Words Post: 

 

The version on the left was the original and three of these ended up in her classroom by request.  The version on the right was an extreme, albeit gradual, makeover whereby each two levels of words Pinkster learned,  earned limbs, features and accessories of her own choosing.

Making the boxes is the easy part and you can download a PDF file of the Dolch words in envelope format here. I've also included postal service stickers to print and glue on for the US, UK and Australia. If you want the blow-by-blow on how we made all his features you can find out here and here.

YEAR ONE

Since Pinkster joined the ranks of the year one students, we've found they've really upped-the-ante as far as homework goes.  The home readers are much harder with some HUGE words, so we decided to call on Mister P again for help.

I've used the Sight words envelope template to print out some blank envelopes, to hand-write the tricky words, so she can learn them the same way she did with Dolch. You can download this template here.

Aside from getting little heads around big and tricky words, myself and several other parents have been struggling with the standard school readers. This complaint isn't exclusive to our school either.

Pinkster  adores The Treehouse books by Andy Griffith and Terry Denton, and I recently discovered Andy Griffiths also writes books for early readers.

As with all the books these guys write they're so fun and engaging; instead of the groans I hear when I mention readers, Pinkster picks these up on her own and just reads them. In fact she started reading them in the toilet; luck we have more than one toilet!

How fast they grow up.



I will be updating this page as we discover new engaging ways to build enthusiasm for home-work so keep checking in.

Oh and if you have any trouble with the links to download email me here and I'll send the files to your inbox.

Good luck,

Suzy