Kindergarten Sight Words Caterpillar

I am always on the hunt for new and creative ideas to help my kids learn. My youngest is having a difficult time with recognizing his letters and words still so that has continued to be our main focus. While pursuing some of my favorite "go to" sites for ideas I came across these lovely little Kindergarten site words from Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler . My son was sold on the caterpillar alone. I loved all seeing so many of the words we have been practicing all year mixed in with some new ones!

At first I was trying to be very structured and rigid with teaching words and letter recognition, but realized quickly that my son simply did not learn well this well at all. With him everything has to be a game and fun or it simply does not stick and I loose his attention. All he wants was for learning to be fun. Sometimes I get so caught up in the "learning" process, I forget to let them learn on their terms and not mine! So I decided to make a game of it instead.

My little man loves matching games and hide and seek games and the like so I figured the best way to get him to learn and not realize it was to make it a fun, light mystery game.

We flipped all the cards over, except for the caterpillar head. Then we each took  turns drawing one card each and adding it to the body.  After we got a few cards down and we went over the words a couple of times, I realized he was getting a little side tracked. It was all too soon time for more creative thinking on my part. So I decided to try and make a funny story out of the mystery words we flipped over.  Drizzle would pick a card from the pile and add it to the caterpillar and then make up a sentence using that word. Then it was my turn  to do the same thing. After a little while we added to the game to keep the fun rolling and I had to make a sentence using his word and mine, all the way down the caterpillar body. We did this for about 8 cards then stated over. If we drew out a color card only we had to work that color into our sentence.

He had a blast and learned some new words in the process and I didn't stress myself out. A two for one deal! yeah. :)    Sometimes I find it amazing how easily he can learn and enjoy himself if I don't  get in the way and try and force learning on him. Afterwards he felt so proud of himself for his accomplishments and was on cloud nine the rest of the night.   The power of the game!   



 I would love to hear any great game ideas that you use to make learning more enjoyable. What has worked and what has been a complete flop with your kiddos?

My little man trying to decide on the perfect card to pick