Magic Sight Word Fortress

The other day as I was practicing sight word flash cards with Christopher, I had an idea to make it a bit more fun for him.  We were on the floor with toys scattered around us and so I grabbed some blocks and made a cage and told him he was going to have to say all the magic sight words to open the cage and rescue whoever was trapped in there.  He decided we should trap a tiger in there.  I said really?  A tiger?  You want to save the tiger that might eat you once you save him? Okay.  He had a lot of fun reading the sight words to get closer to the goal.

The next day he asked if we could do it again, so we did.  This time he wanted to make a huge fortress and put some of his people in there.   I told him batman (who was the good guy that day) was going to have to do some training first to be ready to defeat the evil elephant (who was holding the other people prisoner at this point).  So we went and practiced the flash cards a couple of times while Joshua helped build a large fortress.  He also lined up a bunch of animals along the path which were the elephants henchman.

Batman in training

Then Batman went and read all the words to defeat all the bad guys.  Each time he read a word correctly, he did some karate chopping, took a bad guy away, and knocked down part of the fortress.  He had to read 4 words to defeat the big bad guy elephant.  He had to read another 4 words to break down the walls of the prison.

After I did it with him once, he and Joshua wanted to do it again on their own.  I said "of course".  It was really fun to listen to them play together.  Joshua played the part of the prisoners and would say "Hurry batman! hurry! save us!" and occasionally I would also hear him tell Christopher "remember what the silent e does!" or "what do 'ou' say together?"  It was great to hear him help his brother with his reading.

another version of the sight word fortress

He has asked to play every school day since then, so I would say this sight word game has been a success.