When Ryan started Kindergarten, I remember being surprised the first week when the first spelling list came home. The spelling sheet explained that these were words that Kindergartners were going to be taught to recognize ‘on sight’. I had assumed schools used phonics to teach kids to sound words out, but that was not the case for Kindergarten, at least not in our school district. Think about a word like “said”. If you sound it out phonetically, it would be “Sa-eye-d”. Instead of trying to explain the completely baffling rules that make up pronouncing words in the English language to five year olds, the “sight word” concept just gets them understanding how the whole word is pronounced.

Meet the Sight Words, from Preschool Prep Company, makes learning common pre-K and Kindergarten level sight words easier and more fun by animating the words and reinforcing their pronounciation through repetition. A LOT of repetition, which might drive you a little crazy, but if my two and a half year old is any indication, kids don’t mind the repetition of the word because they are watching fun animation at the same time. When each word is shown on the screen, it’s “brought to life”. Some of the actions go along with the word, and some take the shape of the word itself and turn it into an object. For example, “the” is turned into a helicopter with the propellor on the top of the “h” and the “e” turned into the pilot.

Kaitlyn calls Meet the Sight Words “the word movie”, and she LOVES it. Even her older brothers who are 11 and 9 admit that it’s cute and that they find some of the animation clever, which is pretty high praise coming from them. As the three of them were watching, I wrote down some of the words and animations that they exclaimed over the most:

“In” I is holding open a door inside the letter n, and letting animals IN

“To” T is a basketball player, O is the ball, T is going “to” the basket

“Said”-cupcake assembly line! “d” is the oven, the space inside the “d” is the door. The door opens, “i” takes the cupcake out, puts it on the “a” conveyor belt for a plop of white frosting, then it moves to the “s” conveyor belt for some sprinkles. So cute!

There are three DVDs in the Meet the Sight Words series, I’ll definitely be picking up the second and third DVDs. Preschool Prep Company also makes Meet the Letters, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Colors, and Meet the Shapes. Kaitlyn already knows colors and shapes, but I’d like to get her the Letters and Numbers DVDs to help her start learning visual recognition. There are also sturdy board books to go along with them. Watching these DVDs doesn’t replace reading books to your child and pointing out letters and words, of course, but it’s sure a fun way to reinforce reading and help them gain reading confidence by being able to start Kindergarten already knowing some words by sight!

Read more reviews of Meet the Sight Words at Parent Bloggers Network.

Tags: animation, dvd review, learning, literacy, PBN, reading, sight words

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under PBN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.