Practice & Learn Sight Words with Free Sight Words Worksheets

Published:
March 8, 2022

Sarah Shelton

Contributor:
Sarah Shelton

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Teaching reading isn’t always a walk in the park. Phonics instruction has kids sounding everything out phonetically. This can be confusing for kids to have have to remember all the phonics rules. You want to make sure that you begin with teaching sight words. This can be done at a very young age and learning sight words can be a lot of fun. Be sure to download our free Sight Words Worksheets found at the bottom of this post.

Sight Words Worksheets

Teaching Sight Words to Kids

Teaching sight words at a young age is a great way to develop strong readers later on. When your children have sight word recognition down they can recognize whole words and doesn’t have to pause to sound out individual letters. If you have ever taught a child to read you know how exhausting this can be.

Fluent readers can recognize words without even thinking about them and just move along to the next paragraph. This develops confident readers when they don’t have to remember all the phonics rules, it also builds reading fluency pretty quickly. 

Sight Words

Sight words are very common words that you will find in any first reader book your early readers will pick up to read. Sight words can not be decoded phonetically so they are difficult to sound out. Be sure to scroll down to get access to our sight words worksheets.

This is why it is important for you child to be able to see them and immediately recognize them by sight. 

The best way to teach sight words is with a light of practice. We like to use worksheets and flash cards for extra practice. Learning sight words can be fun with themed worksheets and with some fun flash card games.

Young children will enjoy playing a game of memory with flash cards and sounding out the words as fast as they can.

High Frequency Words

It’s important to teach high-frequency words because these are words that will show up frequently and need to be recognized instantly. These are the most common words that are found in the English language.

Here are some examples of high frequency words that your children will need to know how to read:

the, and, a, to, said, in, he, I, of, it, was, you, they, on, she, is,  for, at, his, but, that, with, all, we, can, are, up, had, my, her, what, there, out, this, have, went, be, like, some, so, not, then, were, go, little.

Kindergarten Sight Words

Often times children in kindergarten will start learning sight words before formal reading instruction begins. This will help these young learners to not become as overwhelmed when they recognize words when they do begin learning how to read.

In common kindergarten texts over 50% of the words your children see will come pre-primer & primer Dolch word lists.

Some of the common sight words a kindergartner will learn:

all, am, are, at, ate, be, black, brown, but, came, did, do, eat, four, get, good, have, he, into, like, must, new, no, now, on, our, out, please, pretty, ran, ride, saw, say, she, so, soon, that, there, they, this, too, under, want, was, well, went, what, white, who, will, with, yes.

Sight Words for Preschool

Children in preschool are primed to learn sight words, especially if you read to them a lot. Beginning readers are easy books with simple sentences in them.

You can start reading these books to your child and point to the word as you are reading it to them. Before you know it, they will begin to recognize the words in the short sentences right away.

One or two letter words are a great place to start.

Some easy sight words for preschoolers to learn are:

a, an, be, go, I, in, is, it, me, my, not, red, run, the, to, two, up, we, you.

Recommended Resource: Sight Words Flash Cards for Beginners

Help your beginning readers learn to recognize more than 200 sight words with these Sight Word Flash Cards for Beginners! There’s a full color card and a black and white card for over 200 high-frequency sight words.

Sight Words Flash Cards for Beginners - picture of full color and black and white high frequency sight words and text "Kids will master over 200 sight words!"

Sight Word Lists

There are different sight words lists that will show up in many types of reading programs. If you want to teach sight words without a reading program you may want to create your own list of sight words by utilizing the different lists.

You can also make flash cards from the different word lists that are out there. This way you can introduce new words on a regular basis in your homeschool.

Let’s take a look at some of the different lists that are out there that you may have heard of.

Dolch Sight Words

The Dolch sight words were developed by Dr. Edward William Dolch in the 1930s and 40s. They were created from the most frequently occurring words from children’s books of that time period.

The list contains 315 sight words. There are 220 words and 95 high-frequency nouns. If your child memorizes these words they will know 80% of the words you will see in a children’s book and 50% of the words found that an adult would read.

Fry Sight Words

The Fry sight word lists are a more modern list of words than the Dolch words. Dr. Edward Fry developed this list of words in the 1950s and updated the list in the 1980s.

There are 1,000 words that are the most common words found in reading materials up through the 12th grade. If your child memorizes and learns these words they will know 90% of the words in typical books and reading materials. 

Recommended Resource: MEGA Early Learning Bundle

Teach your child their numbers, letters, shapes, colors AND sight words with this huge pack of over 600 pages of early learning worksheets! 

Preschool worksheets for letter learning with sale information

Jack Hartmann Sight Words Songs 

Jack Hartmann is a world renowned musician known for his educational children’s songs. He has over 1,000 fun sound and movement songs for kids.

If your kids are auditory learners and visual learners they will enjoy his You Tube music videos and be able to learn a lot from them.

Being able to listen to the sounds of the words, see them on the screen, and hear them in a song form will help you kids to learn them very fast! There are lots of playlists to help your kids learn from the different sight words lists.

I Love Learning Sight Words Playlist

The I Love Learning Sight Words Playlist has 45 sight word song videos. These videos will teach your kids the words: next, there, read, little, love, then, so, that, do, very, no, if, put, an, a, jump, two, has, say, just, must, where, please, by, my, his, one, has, see, said, to, what, is, are, be, here, the, her, this, with.

Dolch Sight Word Review Playlist

The Dolch Sight Word Review Playlist has 22 songs. Jack Hartmann reviews 10 sight words at a time with these songs. Each song video covers 10 words each for a total of 220 of the Dolch words from the Dolch sight word list. 

Fry Sight Word Review Playlist

The Fry Sight Word Review Playlist covers 1,000 sight words from the Fry sight word list. There are 46 videos and each video covers 25 sight words from the Fry lists. 

Jan Richardson Sight Word Review Playlist

Jan Richardson Sight Word Review Playlist – This playlist has 8 videos that review the sight words that are covered in levels A-H of the Jan Richardson sight words.

Sight Words Worksheets PDF Download

When you are teaching your children sight words, it’s good to use a pdf download so you can print it again and again. Repetition and practice of sight words is key for retention and instant word recognition. This sight words worksheets pdf free contains 15 pages of commonly used sight words. 

Thanks for signing up to access our free Sight Words Worksheets. Access more than 50 freebies in the subscriber library with the password: HSGSL922

We add new homeschool downloads to our subscriber library frequently, so be sure to check often. Scroll down to download the Sight Words Worksheets.

Sight Words Worksheets with graphic of worksheet pages and a boy and girl

Download Kindergarten Sight Words Worksheets PDF

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