Need a fun sight word activity for your preschooler or kindergartener? This ocean animal sight word activity is perfect for any Under the Sea week!
Learning sight words is a must, but memorization is boring! Keep reading for a fun and engaging activity that will make memorizing sight words fun!
After seeing how much my daughter loved the fish sight word sort, I started looking for a similar sight word activity we could do to get some extra practice in!
This activity was fun because it included different ocean animals! My daughter loved talking about each animal before putting them in the paper bags.
Flexibility
The great thing about this ocean animal sight word activity is how flexible it is!
If your child isn’t learning sight words yet, don’t stress! You can put letters, numbers, colors, or shapes on your ocean animals instead. This activity is very easy to adapt to what your child is learning.
Supplies
- Construction paper
- Markers
- Scissors
- Brown paper bags
Some prep work
An important part of setting this up is remembering that your child will not critique your artwork.
When I was drawing the ocean animals I went with animals that I could easily draw and she could easily recognize.
If you aren’t good at drawing a seahorse or turtle, then don’t do those animals!
I went with a fish, octopus, jellyfish, and a stingray. All 4 of these were pretty simple drawings and the animals were easy for her to recognize.
After you draw your animals you will want to cut them out. I did 4 or 5 colors of each animal to add a bit of variety to the activity.
From here, you will want to pick your sight words. I usually focus on 3 – 4 different sight words for each activity. You will want to make sure you have a mix of review sight words and new sight words. The mix of easy wins with something new will help keep your child engaged during the activity!
The second half of this activity is the bags! These are relatively straightforward. Get some brown lunch bags and put your sight words on them.
How to do it
The first time you do this ocean animal sight word activity with your child I would recommend setting the words right in front of the brown lunch bags. I helped my daughter sort a few and then she picked up on how to do the activity by herself.
Once your child has a good grasp on the activity, you can then turn it into a scavenger hunt!
We love scavenger hunts in our house! I have found they are a great way to entertain my daughter anytime I have a chunk of time I expect to be busy. Usually we will do them in the morning when I have a work meeting or really want to get dishes done.
When doing a scavenger hunt with my preschooler I will “hide” a max of 10 animals. My daughter usually loses interest around animal 6 – 8, depending on the day.
What do you think? Are there other fun games you were able to play?