Making sight words stick can be a difficult task for any teacher, so take your word work to a whole new level with visual, kinesthetic and tactile word building activities! These activities are sure to engage your students and help them easily learn high frequency word wall words. The best part is that these activities are low-prep and work with any word or spelling list! Be sure to grab the FREE word building tub labels to help organize your word building materials!
In order for students to master sight words, they must practice, practice, practice! Repetition, as well as activities that hit multiple learning styles, are key. However, I finally discovered that these activities do not need to be overly time-consuming to prep. The word building area in my classroom has eight tubs containing different word building activities. I introduce these activities two at a time. Once I have modeled how to appropriately complete each activity, the students who are at our "Word Building" rotation are able to choose which word building activity they would like to complete during center time. They simply grab the appropriate tub, similar to these tubs, and head off to begin building the words from our word wall.
These alphabet clips are always a hit! To make the clips, I used Bright Colored Clothespins and wooden Alphabet Tiles. The letter return strip is actually glued onto a paint stick this way the students can easily replace the letters in alphabetical order. I printed word cards, but you could easily write your words on index cards.
Kinetic Sand is another classroom favorite word building activity! For this activity, the students use dough stampers to stamp the words into the Kinetic Sand. I especially love that the Kinetic Sand is mess free, as it does not stick to the students' hands...that definitely makes for a win in my book!
Letter tiles are another great word building manipulative! For this activity, the students grab a letter tray of Red & Blue Letter Tiles and work to build as many words as they can in crossword-fashion. This activity is similar to Scrabble® and can be completed individually or as a group. We do not keep score for each individual letter or word. Instead, we work to build the most words from the word wall!
I also like to incorporate alphabet beads into my word building centers. Although alphabet beads are a very simple word building tool, they require a high degree of fine motor execution. Plus, the students must thread the letters in the correct order as they build each word. We just string the words onto pipe cleaners, but you could also use shoelaces. As an extra challenge, I have my students use the words to build a sentence.
Stacking cubes are quite often thought of as a math or STEM tool, but they work exceptionally well as a word building tool too! I literally threw all of the stacking cubes into a tub and let the students get to work on building the letters in the words. This activity is also excellent fine motor practice for little hands.
These letter cubes also provide extra fine motor practice. The students simply link together the letters in a word using this double-sided UNIFIX® CVC Letter Cubes Set. We store each set of letter cubes inside a plastic pencil box, making them easy for the students to transport to another area of our classroom.
It doesn't get anymore low-prep than a tub full of craft sticks! I also added some short craft sticks, but you could easily cut some regular craft sticks in half. This one is one of my favorite word building activities, because it requires a little creativity and problem solving as the students determine how to build each letter in the word!
Our last word building tub contains these Pencil Boxes full of Wax Craft Sticks. I laminated some card stock to serve as a work mat. The students bend and shape the wax sticks to form words from the word wall. Pipe cleaners work equally as well for this word building station.
So there you have it -- a variety of word building activities to make sight words stick! Make these activities novel, tactile, kinesthetic and visual! Don't forget to grab your FREE word building labels here!
