1. Overview

Sight Words Boom! is a vocabulary-themed game for one or more players. Children will collect cards by correctly reading the sight words printed on them. But watch out for the BOOM cards! Draw a BOOM card, and you lose all the cards you collected and have to start over.

Image: Sight Words Boom!

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2. Materials

• Sight Words Boom! cards

Create Boom! cards with our Boom! Card Creator and print the cards out on cardstock paper. Each sheet will have eight sight word cards and one BOOM card. Cut apart the cards along the dotted lines.

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3. Activity

Shuffle the cards and put them in a face-down stack. Player A draws a card from the stack and reads the word on it out loud, moving her index finger from left to right underneath the letters as she reads. (An adult should demonstrate this reading technique at the start of the game to teach or remind children how best to read the word.)

If she reads the word correctly, she gets to keep the card. Then Player B takes a turn (if there are multiple players). If Player A does not read the word correctly, Player B gets a chance to read that word and collect a card.

NOTE: If there is a word that no player can read correctly, the adult should set the card aside as a reminder to work on that word in the next day’s lesson.

The BOOM cards are what make this game fun and exciting! If a child draws a BOOM card, she loses all the cards she has collected. On her next turn she can start collecting new cards. The lost cards (including the BOOM card) should be shuffled and added to the bottom of the face-down stack.

Keep playing until all the cards in the face-down stack have been collected. The winner is the player with the most cards.

If there is only one player, she plays to see how many cards she can collect before losing them to a BOOM card. She can play repeatedly, trying to beat her previous record.

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4. Confidence Builder

If the child is easily discouraged when she loses her cards, simply play with fewer BOOM cards.

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5. Variation

Set a timer for anywhere from one to five minutes. Challenge the players to read as many words and collect as many cards as they can before the time runs out. But they still have to watch out for the BOOM cards!

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6. Printable Boom! Cards

Create your own custom Boom! cards or use some of our pre-made templates below.

To download a template, right-click and select Save As.

These materials are provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Essentially, this means you can do whatever you want with the resources, provided you leave the attribution hallmark on the resources. You may use these materials in the classroom, at home, as part of a for-profit tutoring business, or for any other purpose. (Except starting forest fires. That’s bad.) You do not need to contact us for permission to use the materials. We want you to use them!

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