QBoy has been working on developing his sight word knowledge this year. I find he doesn’t have a ton of patience for just sitting around and doing worksheets – not that doing tons of worksheets is my style anyway. But with QBoy, I have to continually find new ways to entice him to practice his sight words because, quite frankly, most of the time he’d much rather be playing with LEGO than developing his literacy skills!
This sight word magic activity was one way that I came up with to engage him in the process of learning his sight words. I call it “magic” because the words seem to magically disappear from the paper as he completes the activity. And as an added bonus, this sight word magic activity develops fine motor control too.
Note: You can find more ideas for supporting children’s reading skills on my Literacy Activities for Kids page.
To do this sight word magic activity, we used the following materials:
- A tray to contain the mess
- A coffee filter with sight words written in marker
- A plastic pipette for dripping water onto the coffee filter (we own these pipettes but I also love the one in this set)
- A small cup of water
After reviewing the sight words with my son, I presented the activity to him.
The idea was for him to select a word, read it out loud, and then drip water on it to make it “magically” disappear.
When the words are written with marker on a coffee filter, adding water makes the ink spread out in a process called chromatography. Essentially, they end up disappearing “like magic.”
We’ve explored chromatography before in a coffee filter art project as well magic disappearing shapes and magic letter learning fun activities. The learning possibilities with this set up are practically endless!
More reading resources
More sight word posts from Gift of Curiosity:
You can find more ideas for supporting children’s reading skills on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Reading, Writing, and Spelling Skills Pinterest board.
Follow Katie @ Gift of Curiosity’s board Reading, Writing, and Spelling skills on Pinterest.
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So fun! I was just looking for new ideas to practice sight words. We will be adding this to our upcoming school week. Thanks for the inspiration! 🙂