Lucy now knows 60 sight words, almost all of the preschool words and some of the kindergarten words. She knows all of the letters and their sounds and is beginning to sound out words. She doesn't like sounding out words, but she likes playing reading apps on her tablet. I have bought some little beginning readers for her, but I've been disappointed in them so far. I know I can't expect a lot of plot when she knows so few words, but the books we've found have so many unfamiliar words that she gets bogged down and wants to give up. Of course, one solution is to put the books away until she's ready for them, which is what I'm doing. But I know that she loves reading the sentences I write her using the words she knows. So I thought I'd pass along that list in case anyone wanted to write something for her as a Christmas gift or stocking stuffer.
Here are the sight words she knows:
No, Not, Yes
Articles: a, an, the
Nouns: can, cat, one, three, two
Pronouns: all, he, I, it, me, my, one, she, we, who, you
Verbs: am, are, be, can, did, do, eat, find, get, go, help, is, jump, like, look, make, ride, run, see, will
Adverbs: away, down, here, so, too, up
Adjectives: big, black, blue, funny, good, little, new, one, pretty, red, three, two, white, yellow
Prepositions: for, in, into, like, on, out, to, up
Conjunctions: and, so
Sticking to those words as much as possible is good. Having her sound out a word or two is fine as long as the words are three letters long and have short vowel sounds (tub, fox, dog, etc.). And using multiple words from a word family (ball, call, mall, wall, etc.) is a great idea.
I've sketched out a little cartoon with two characters describing trees. (Tree would be the new word.) One says his tree is tall; the other says his tree is big. It turns out their just standing on different sides of the same tree. (The characters are stick figures named Curly and Spike due to their hair-dos.) I'll also try writing a few stories that she can illustrate.
Most of what Lucy knows, she has learned from playing games on a tablet. I'm not trying to push her, but I want her to have opportunities to expand the skills she already has and learn to love reading rather than find it frustrating.
