Five Sight Word Apps to Help Your Kids Learn to Read

Hey, my friend! Are you trying to help your kiddo learn to read? Me too!

It can be HARD, right?! Even my five-year-old has told me, “Mom, I don’t like English. It’s hard!” And he’s RIGHT! It IS hard. English is incredibly hard! And sight words can be the hardest of all. It’s easy to get discouraged when we get something wrong over and over.

Sight words aren’t long words, or difficult to say or even hard to recognize. But, a lot of sight words are cheater words.

Most of them don’t follow the rules. They are hard to sound out for a beginning reader. The silent -e. The hard -c sound. Words that look like they should rhyme, but don’t. Or words that shouldn’t rhyme, but they do!

Have you had this struggle with your child too? As parents, it’s hard to watch our kids struggle, right? My kindergartner would refuse to practice or even try. Tears, tantrums, the whole nine yards. Until we found something that works for him.

He has always liked his “tablet time”.  I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that would hyperventilate with horror at the amount of screen time this kid has under his belt. But, that’s fine.

When he was two-and-a-half years old, he could correctly identify a pentagon, a hexagon, a trapezoid and an octagon in everyday items. My inner mommy would cackle hysterically when people gave me compliments on teaching him such complex shapes at such a young age. If only these people knew he was learning all this from an app on my tablet and I didn’t do much more than encourage him. Half the time, I was just as surprised as they were that he knew them!

This boy learns well with his allotted tablet time and I’m not going to refuse to use the resource when it works so well for him.  And I’m so glad there are people out there that develop quality apps that we can use! They are definitely one of my mommy heroes.

In our house, practicing sight words is not a fight anymore!

Does that sound nice? Want to see if practicing sight words during screen time can help your kids actually enjoy the task? Great! But which apps should you try? No worries, Momma! I’ve done all the work for you. 

I tried at least a dozen different sight word apps before I let Big J loose.  I narrowed it to six and let him play with them.  He chose his favorites and now he gets 20 minutes a day of sight word practice.

Best of all, he LIKES it and he’s learning!  I don’t get frustrated because he won’t try, he doesn’t get frustrated because it’s hard.  He can see that he’s making progress and he likes to read the early readers with me now.  And he can pick out some of the sight words, which was the goal all along, right?

Our Favorite Sight Word Apps

• Sight Words Learning Games. This is my favorite app. The lite version of this app has two games for your kiddo to play. Both are great. Big J’s favorite is the gear game. This app features the 220 Dolch sight words (plus 90+ nouns) in five skill levels.  It also has uppercase, lowercase and combined forms of the words.  In the full version, there are six games, including a set of flashcards.  The lite version is available for free and the full version is currently $1.99 in the Play Store. Also in the App Store and in the Amazon App Store.  I will be back to this company.
  
  

• • Phonics Spelling and Sight Words.  This app is good for after your kiddo has been working with sight words.  I wouldn’t use it as an introduction for sight words because it’s geared a little more toward drills and practicing, rather than playing.  But now that Big J understands and knows some of the words, it’s good practice.  It also works on letter blending.  This app has 300 words divided into two levels, Pre-K and K.
    Available for free in the Play Store and the Amazon App Store.
    
    (Some of the reviewers were complaining about the ad content in the app.  I personally haven’t had any questionable ads pop up while we’re playing (I usually have to help Big J with this one a little so I usually see everything that pops up on the screen), but you might want to keep an eye on it.)

• • Words for Kids – Reading Game.  It’s also called Bud’s First Words.  This game encourages kids to learn new vocabulary words, as well as begin to recognize sentence structure and recognize sight words.  There are over 350 vocabulary words and is a great app for English as a Second Language Learners.  This app is targeted more toward younger readers (great for preschoolers, kids with learning disabilities or new language learners) and doesn’t have an intense focus on the actual sight words, but I like that it shows Big J that sight words show up in everyday life.  There are in-app purchases in the lite version or your can get the full version ($2).  Both versions are available in the Play Store (lite|full) as well as the Amazon App Store (lite|full).  It’s also available in the App Store  There are Japanese, Korean, and Spanish versions as well in the Play Store. I’m going to have both my boys try the Spanish version.

• • Kids Reading Sight Words.  This is another app by Intellijoy.  I really, really like their apps.  They are engaging and entertaining for my kids, but still have a great educational aspect.  These are the apps my kids will play and not even realize they are learning.  Their sight words app uses the 220 Dolch sight words in five skill levels to identify sight words and common words at their reading level as well as develop reading fluency.  Available in the Play Store (lite|full), in the Amazon App Store (lite|full).  You can find the app in the App Store as well, though I don’t know if there is a lite version. I couldn’t find it.  I love all of Intellijoy’s apps and this one is worth every penny. Promise. (I have purchased the lifetime All-in-One pack that Intellijoy offers on Android. I don’t know if this is an option for Apple devices – I couldn’t find anything in my brief search. But, I love having access to all their high-quality games. And customer service was super helpful when I changed phones and I couldn’t access my all-in-one pack.)

• Princesses Learn Sight Words.  Not just for girls, my friends.  Although, I’m sure any princess-loving little lady out there would adore this app too.  I wasn’t sure if it would be a hit or not with Big J, but he loved the music and the games.  While there are definite improvements that could be made to this app to increase the sight word learning process, it’s not a bad way for a kid to spend ten or fifteen minutes.  This app allows kids to recognize sight words in a story-based context, which helps them recognize them in other text they see.  The games aren’t super educational (memory, coloring, stickers, bingo and songs) but it is fun and the kids are still being exposed to educational content.  In-app purchases are available.  Get the app in the Play Store, Amazon App Store, and the App Store for free.  There are also versions of Princesses Learn Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and more.  Check out all the Early Languages Apps in the Play Store.

What are your favorite sight word apps or other educational apps?