Make memorizing fun with this easy, engaging fish sight word activity! 

Do you remember being in school and having to memorize flashcards? 

I remember I really struggled with my times tables. After school every day I would sit at the kitchen table with a stack of cards bored out of my mind!

It’s not that I didn’t want to learn my times tables. All of my friends knew theirs and it was embarrassing that I struggled. 

Flashcards and memorizing are just boring!

I remember sitting there, staring at each of the cards, just wishing time would speed up and I could be done. 

Even if you know why memorizing something is important, it’s still boring. You say and write the thing over and over until it finally sticks. 

When I started doing preschool at home, I did it because I wanted to teach my daughter to LOVE learning. I wanted to show her that learning new things is fun! 

Memorizing sight words is NOT fun. 

Just the thought of sitting down with my daughter and a stack of sight word flashcards has me stressed. 

There HAS to be a better way. 

One day I was sitting in a meeting at work and a stack of blank flashcards on my desk caught my eye. 

I bet I could turn those into a fish, I thought. 

This week we have had an Under the Sea theme to our preschool activities and my daughter loves it! Adding some sort of fish flashcard activity would be fun! 

Once I had the outline of my little fish, I knew I wanted to use these for sight word practice. 

This sight word fish activity has been a big hit and I am actively trying to come up with new ideas just like it. 

Everyday this week all I had to do was tell my daughter, “let’s go put the fish in their home!” and she would run excitedly to where we had our fish set up. 

THIS is the type of energy I want my daughter to have when she’s thinking about learning something new!

Flexibility

Something that I strive for in all of my activities is flexibility! 

Just because my kid is learning sight words doesn’t mean your kid is learning sight words. 

You can put whatever you want on your fish! Letters, numbers, shapes, colors, CVC words, and even math equations!

Yes, I might just bring this activity back when my daughter is learning her time’s tables.

Supplies

• Flashcards
• Markers
• Scissors 
• Easel paper 
• Painters tape 

How it works

Making the fish sight words

When drawing your little fish, I would recommend starting with the triangle tail and then doing the body. The shape of my fish always turned out better that way. 

From there you cut! 

After drawing a little face on the fish, I tried giving them to my daughter to color. She wasn’t too interested in that though. 

If your kid does color the fish, I would recommend only offering them bright colors. This will allow you to use a black marker to write the sight words, so they stand out and are easy to read. 

I would recommend picking 2 – 4 different words and making 3 or 4 fish for each word. Any more than that and your preschooler is likely to lose interest and get bored.

Put little loops of painters tape on the back of the fish. This will allow you to take the fish on and off the paper or wall throughout the week. 

Making the landscApe

Before my daughter woke up I taped a section of easel paper to the wall. When taping things to the wall I always use painter’s tape to make sure we don’t ruin the wall while playing. 

From here you will want to draw some sort of underwater scene. 

I was in a bit of a rush and my artistic abilities aren’t the best on the fly, so I opted for some simple coral and seaweed. I think adding little bubbles really helped the cuteness of the picture and fill the page. 

Like with the fish, you will want to use bright colors for the picture. This will allow you to use a black marker for the sight words.

Once you have the picture, you add the sight words! 

Try to space your sight words out! You don’t want a bunch of fish clustered super close together. 

I added extra words to the picture to make sure it was easy for my daughter to find the matching word. 

My favorite part about this activity is we were able to revisit it all week (admittedly, it might have been up for 2 weeks). 

How did your kid like the activity? Was there anything fun that you added?