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 you’re 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!
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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