Turn early reading practice into a game your kids will beg to play! This simple twist on the great Go Fish card game uses beginning reader sight words to build fluency, boost word recognition, and make learning fun. Whether youāre a teacher or a parent, this easy-to-prep game brings reading excitement and reading fun whenever you choose.
Because kids are super familiar with Go-Fish rules it makes it much easier for them to concentrate on the learning part of the game. That’s the reason Go-Fish is such a great game for teaching all sorts of things! In this case teaching those words they need to recognize without having to sound them out!
Ā How We Play Sight Word Go-Fish
All you need are a few fun sight word games to prepare your kiddo for Kindergarten. Go Fish is one of the best and most versatile to have around.
The way we play is very easy. I print out two copies of each set of words. Then we turn all the cards face down in the big “fish pond” and we each take out five random cards. If we have any pairs, we lay them down and choose other cards so that before we start, each player has five cards in his or her hand.
Then we get rolling! We say, “Do you have the word look (or whatever)? If the other person does have the card, she hands it over. If not, she says, “Nope, I don’t have the word look. Go Fish!
If the player is lucky enough to pick up the desired card, we say, “You fished your wish!! If not, it’s the next person’s turn. At the end of the game, the only pairs that count are the ones that the player reads–no pressure–we always help if necessary, but it just sneaks in one more reading of a word that will soon be committed to memory!
We’ve added a few blank cards as well so you can add family members’ names, town names, your state, pet names etc. Really whatever extra words they need.
I recommend printing out several extra pages of the blank cards to use as their reading vocabulary grows.
And that’s it–just 10 or 15 minutes every few days to make learning to read fun and doing what we can to get our kiddos ready for school! Yippee!
Some Additional Uses for Go-Fish
- Print a headshot of each family member on one set of cards and names on the other set. This is really great at family reunions where your kids may not be sure who everyone is!
- One year when we (uhm… I mean I) wanted to learn Spanish as a family, I printed the English word on one set and the Spanish words on the other. The kids drew pictures on yet another set, so sometimes we matched the picture to the Spanish word! I still have them in my desk drawer.
- Use new words specific to the new story they are reading. Try this even with stories above the child’s reading level because as you read the story to them they can supply the new word as you come to it in the story.
- Create a set of subject specific words. Math terms might include add, subtract, plus, minus, greater than, less than etc. You get the idea.
- Use the cards to make up funny sentences your child can read for himself. You may need to add a few more nouns to the list for this one. The goofier the better!
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What a fun way to practice the early emergent words : ) My daughter Grace sounds like she is going through the same phase as Owen in reading right now. She is sooo excited about finding words everywhere and I am loving it! Any suggestions about this…she is trying to sound out every word as she finds them…on books, signs, in the grocery store by using picture and context clues and then asks…’is that what the word really says mommy?’ Trying to think of ways to respond while keeping it positive. Thanks for you posts! I printed out a set of the early emergent words and she loves them.
hey Kelly–you’re right! Grace and Owen sound like they’re at just about the same stage–which means they’d be an early-literacy force to be reckoned with if they ever got together!
Sounds like you’re doing the best thing–I’d just respond as positively as possible and point to the letters as you repeat the word for her (if you don’t lose your mind by the end of the shopping trip!). Maybe have her bring along a little notebook so SHE can copy the words as she goes. . . might slow down your trip but at least she’d be focused (?)–
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I used this game a lot in the classroom (as well as Concentration). I taught the students how to fold a 9X12 piece of paper into 16 small rectangles. They picked 8 words to write 2x in their rectangles, cut them out, then played with a partner for about 10 mintues. When the timer went off, they switched partners and did it again. I loved this activity because the prep work for me = nada! š The kids loved this and begged to play, even though they did all the work! It reviewed reading, writing, counting, cutting, and social skills. Pretty cool.
I really like your adaptation to the classic game!
Becky–
LOVE this idea!! So smart, so simple, but so many skills are hit–you’re right! Will definitely try it out during homework time w/ my kids or w/ my tutoring students!
Thanks for the great suggestion! We have to pick up some food for Easter dinner tomorrow so we will give that a shot and I think she will really enjoy it.
awesome–let me know how it goes, and let’s definitely stay in touch! xo
What a great way to work on sight words!! This is a lot more fun than flipping through the cards – my kids would love this!! Thanks.
thanks so much, Camille!! You are so kind for writing!
My Jeb is right there with Owen….really starting to read! So exciting! I’m loving this idea because it sounds fun and because you’ve made it entirely too easy for me! Jeb loves to practice reading by himself on his terms, no pressure, so if I want to lead some of the learning I have to sneak it into a game. Here are two things we’ve done this week so far.
The first is a sight word Easter egg hunt. Just write the words on slips of paper, put in eggs, and hide. He (and his little brother) got to go on a hunt. He found the eggs and then we looked inside each to read the words. Beside each word I had written either a 1 or 2. This corresponded to how many pennies he got when he/we figured out the word. CVC words he got 1 penny because he’s pretty good at sounding those out. For sight words he got 2 pennies because some of those can’t be sounded out. Now, I don’t usually pay my kids to read (actually, I’ve never done it), but I used to love getting the prize egg with the coins in it when I was a kid, so for some reason I associate those little plastic eggs with money. I’m telling myself it was a great math lesson as well….especially when we switched pennies for nickels and nickels for dimes.
The second game we played was this: I drew a circle, divided it into several equal parts, labeled each part with a word, and used a pencil/paper clip to make a spinner. Then, on a separate sheet of paper I made a bar graph labeled with the same words. He spun the spinner and graphed which word it landed on. He did this until one of the words reached the top of the graph. It was funny, because he started cheering for one particular word to win. Again, what a great math lesson. Which word had the most? The least? Which two words both had four?
My oldest just laughed because she understood that I was getting him to practice reading through these games. What she doesn’t realize, is that I do it with her too!
BRANDY!! YOU are incredible! HUGE thanks for sharing these two FUN, fun ideas with me–and you’re right–it sounds like your Jeb is right along with my Owen. Again, this is why we’d be great neighbors. . . xoxo
I just realized that I seem to always write a ton when I leave a comment here. Seriously, I don’t mean to do it. My fingers just fly through typing whatever I’m thinking and the next thing I know, I’ve written a book. It usually only takes two or three minutes to type so it doesn’t feel like I’m writing that much. But look, here I am, about to do it again. Sigh.
You are a riot, my friend! I LOVE IT!!
What a fantastic way to practice sight words! I have a soon-to-be kindergartner who will enjoy, this, thank you!
thanks, Maryanne!!
Hope it works out for your soon-to-be kindergartner!!