If you have been following our learning journey, you will know my girls are into anything that will stick to any surface! We have been exploring with painter’s tape, and now that the girls are getting older, there is much more advanced learning fun to be had with this sticky stuff. The possibilities for constructing learning activities with painter’s tape are endless because you can literally purchase a rainbow! 

A simple activity I want to share with you that we did is: Find and Cover The Sight Words.

My girl’s vocabularies are expanding, and they are super eager to learn new words, so each week, I try to provide them with opportunities to do just that.

What are Sight Words, and why are sight words important?

Sight words are common words like ‘my’, ‘look’, ‘the’ and ‘little’ that children need to recognize instantly. These words are commonly used in language and must be learned by memorization because they do not follow conventional spelling and phonetic rules and are difficult to sound out.

When our little ones are able to recognize words instantly by sight, they become fluent readers, which leads to them being able to comprehend what they read.

Some tips on teaching Sight Words:

• Teach your child a few words at a time. This will lead to your child being confident as words are gradually added to the list of words they are learning.
• Repetition is vital when teaching young children, so practice words on a daily basis because sight words will take some extra effort on the part of our little ones to learn.
• Read books with the words you are teaching to your little ones, and have them find the words in the text as you read. 
• You can also allow your child to read text from the story with the words they are learning so that they are putting their newfound knowledge to use.
• Use words to compose sentences for your child to read so that they are getting some needed exposure, as children will learn a word after being exposed to that word anywhere from 4-14 times.
• Play games with the sight words so your little one will be learning while having fun.
• Place words around the home or the classroom as they learn them. I have sight words on the wall in my girls’ bedroom, and we read them at night before going to bed. 
• For children who are older and writing, encourage them to use the words they are learning whenever they are writing. My girls are not writing as yet, but in their journals, I write sentences they construct or write sentences for them to draw pictures.

What you will need to recreate this activity:

• Painters tape ( Any colour will do. We used red, orange and yellow.)
• Marker
• Paper 
• Scissors 
• Craft sticks ( I used the craft sticks to place the tape on for the girls to pick them off and cover the words on their lists.

How to put this activity together:

This simple activity only requires a little preparation, and I love that. I was able to prepare for this activity in under half an hour.

You only need to write the words you want your little ones to learn on your paper.

Stretch your tape across a table or counter space and write the words that are on the paper on the tape.

After writing, you can use scissors to cut between words or just tear the tape with your hands and place them on the edges of your craft sticks.

Your activity is ready for your little ones to learn and have some sticky fun.

This activity is excellent for working on or reviewing:

• Some Letter sounds
• Concentration 
• Oral language skills
• Fine motor skills
• Spacial awareness
• Hand-eye coordination 
• Oral language development 

I used a large piece of paper because I am working with twins.

I also wrote different words based on my girls’ literacy journey.

If you are working with multiple children and using a large piece of paper, as we did, you can assign colours so that each child is working at their level on the same paper.

After the activity was completed, the girls took turns reading the words on their lists. We kept the activity in our learning space for the remainder of the week and used it for reviewing.

We do hope you find this activity useful.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by sending us a message or visiting us @learning.stepbystep on Instagram, Learning Step By Step on Facebook and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for educational resources that will help you and your littles on their learning journey as they continue to Learn Step By Step!

Thank you for being here!

Kimberlee and the Learning Step By Step Team.

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