About a month or so ago we were sent two review sets of BOB books to try out. We have spent the last few weeks exploring the books, doing some activities along with them, and sharing them with our friends.
One of our absolutely favorite activities that we did a few weeks ago was inspired by Mat Hid, the first book in the Sight Words Kindergarten Series.
Materials Needed: Three play-doh containers, markers, white sticky labels, a party blower, a set of BOB books: Sight Words Kindergarten Series (book 1), and some tall blocks (we used our large Melissa and Doug blocks).
Directions:
1. Grab your BOB book (Mat Hid... or any of the books in the series... or really any book for that matter) and check out the front inside the cover for the list of sight words that will be found in the book. Write down each sight word on a sticky label using a marker and then have your little one help you slap them on the outside of your reused play-doh containers. Put one word on each container.
2. Review each sight word using the handy dandy sight word flash cards inside the set. I'm not a huge fan of flash cards, but I like these ones because they have the word on one side and the word in a sentence on the other side (with a simple image).
3. Grab your party blower and start reading! Every time you find a sight word in the book, read it, talk about what it means (we liked to reference the pictures), look for the matching sight word on the play-doh container, and knock it down using the blower!
This was seriously the most fun we had all day.
We also shared the Kindergarten Sight Words set with some friends.
Here are some of our favorite things about the Kindergarten sight words books based on observations and some feedback from our friends:
- They are visually simple. The illustrations don't distract from the story. Sometimes it was useful to cover up the second page when we were reading though to keep the reader focused on just one page.
- Three new sight words are introduced in each book and the books are filled with simple short vowel words that are easy to decode. One kindergarten friend was very proud of herself as she moved through the series and could read the full sentences all by herself.
- They have silly characters. Our kindergarten friend who tried these books out said she loved the characters and thought the illustrations were really funny!
- The books have simple tips about the sight words for parents inside the front cover (like, "Point out to your child that you don't need to say both ff's in off"). As a teacher, I already knew most of the information, but I loved the reminders.
- The books are small and easy for children to handle/manipulate and the compact case is easy for storing all of the materials in one spot. My son loved to talk about his little books and enjoyed carrying them around.
These books are a great addition to our library and are used as a tool (along with many other resources) to help with sight word mastery. We also love to use the flashcards to do sight word hunts as we read other books in the house. My little guy isn't interested in reading these every day at the moment, but I love to have them out and available for when he is interested... just like a lot of our books. I think providing a range of types of books is really important... since you never know what kids will like! We are grateful to our friends at BOB Books and Scholastic for providing us with the Sight Words Kindergarten Series set to review.
Do you have any other favorite sight word resources that you use?
Have you tried to BOB books iPhone and iPad Apps?
That's on our list of things to do tomorrow 🙂 We've heard rave reviews about them.
This really looks fun. Great way to use the books and reinforce them with a game.
We liked the series "Now I'm Reading" when Little J was learning to read. They are similar to the Bob Books.
Thanks for linking up to AfterSchool.
What a wonderful way to review words! I love how you reused the blower.
I will have to check that series out too! I don't understand why companies do small print for books for little kids. You'd think that would be an obvious thing NOT to do?!
My kindergartner isn't a big fan of Bob books, but she LOVED the Season of Sight words fall series by Scholastic. My only complaint it that the writing font is very small.