My oldest son J has been able to read since before he turned two.
I later learned there's a name for that - It's called hyperlexia!
But long before I knew what hyperlexia was, we would spend our days together playing with words and letters because that's what he loved to do.
These sight word puzzles are just one of the many activities and games that we would play after I discovered that he taught himself to read. Partly as a way to see what he could read and partly to encourage him to read even more.
So here's how to make popsicle stick sight word puzzles for your kids.
Popsicle Stick Sight Word Puzzles: What You'll Need
Here's what you'll need to make these sight word puzzles:
- Colored craft/popsicle sticks - You don't have to use colored ones if you don't want to, but, honestly, they're more fun, don't you think? You could also opt for the jumbo craft sticks like these if you want the puzzles to be a bit larger.
- Black permanent marker - To write the sight words on the popsicle sticks.
- A list of words - Could be sight words, weekly spelling words, or whatever else you want to practice spelling.
Before I made the puzzles, I googled common sight words and found this Dolch sight word list. And, after reading the list closely, I realized that J can read well over half of these words already. He was only 3 1/2 years old when I made these, but I discovered that he could read words listed at a Grade Three level?! Wow.
Anyway, I only had 72 sticks, so I stuck with the Pre-Primer Level words. But feel free to choose and use whatever words you'd like. You might opt for weekly spelling words instead of sight words, for instance.
How to Make this Sight Word Popsicle Stick Game
Once you decide which words you will be using, put two matching colored popsicle sticks together and write one word across the two sticks using black permanent marker.
Here's how the sight word puzzles will look when they're all made:
Use these Sight Word Puzzles to Teach & Practice Sight Words
I mixed up all of the puzzle sticks and left them on the floor in the living room for the boys. I also matched one sight word puzzle for J, illustrating what the objective of the activity was. Naturally, he caught on quickly.
J worked his way through the puzzles fairly easily, reading each one as he went. There were a couple of words he didn't recognize like "said" and "away" (he kept saying awake, so he was close!), so I helped him read those ones.
But what I found interesting was how J went about solving the puzzles.
When he picked up a random stick, he would try to guess the word based on the half of the word that he could see. He guessed correctly almost every single time! Then he would search for the other half, using the color of the stick as a guide. He also used a lot of "same/matching" and "different" vocabulary as he searched for the other half of the puzzle.
Anyway, I found it fascinating how he could guess the word, even though the part of the word he could see was so small. (Note: this isn't surprising based on the hyperlexia research, as I would later learn).
After he completed a majority of the puzzles, J used the sticks to create letters and numbers. You probably figured that would happen though if you have a hyperlexic child like I do. After all, it's such a hyperlexia thing to do!
As for my youngest K, he was curious about the colorful sticks as well. He carefully examined them, as you can see.
Are you going to try making your own set of popsicle stick sight word puzzles? As you can see, they were really easy to make!
