Brilliant Sight Word Easter Egg Hunt — Read the Room

As a teacher, I love to make a themed activity that goes beyond a simple craft (though I love a good craft too), and an Easter egg hunt is a fun option to mix up our playground time when spring rolls around. But if I gave my four-year-olds a bunch of candy in the middle of the day, I’d have kids bouncing off the walls like pennies in a tin can!

So I created this sight-word Easter egg hunt, instead. Why sight words? Well, sight words—also called high-frequency words—are words children come across often, but which aren’t easy to sound out. For example, a new reader won’t have learned about silent letters yet, but will see the word come a lot. Or they learn that A makes the “short vowel” sound like in apple and then can’t understand the word are. Some common sight words are: a, are, the, he, she, we, I, no.

We teach children to recognize these words by sight, hence the name. This means that the more children are exposed to these words, the faster they’ll pick them up and add them to their reading arsenal. This egg hunt literacy game is a fun way to celebrate the season (without the sugar rush), get kids active, and keep them learning in a playful way. Ready? Let’s hop to it!

Materials Needed:

Plastic Easter eggs
Easter basket or other container for collecting eggs
Paper (multiple sheets)
Pencil or marker
Scissors
Tape

Step 1: On a piece of paper, write down 10 to 12 sight words. If you aren’t sure which sight words to use, you can ask your child’s teacher for a list or review websites like www.sightwords.com for a comprehensive list.

Step 2: Write the sight words on a second sheet of paper and tape it to the wall, at your child’s eye level if possible.

Step 3: Cut out each individual word from the first sheet of paper, and then place each word in a plastic Easter egg.

Step 4: Hide the eggs around your home or yard.

Step 5: Show your child the list of sight words on the wall and review each word with them. Then send them on an Easter egg hunt!

Once they’ve collected their eggs, have them bring the eggs back to the posted list and match the words inside to the words on the wall. Which words did they find? Have they found all the words? Can they remember what each word is?

Optional: If your kid is going to expect sweets once you’re dabbling in Easter eggs (we get it!), or if you have some leftover Easter candy to dole out, you can give out candies as prizes in return for their found sight words. Just let them turn in each sight word that they successfully read for a piece of candy. (And let them try each word as many times as it takes to succeed!)

Like many of my favorite activities, this is one you can do again and again—it doesn’t have to only be at Easter. You can change up the sight words as your child gains mastery. And being a Dollar Store Diva myself, I love that I can get these plastic eggs on the cheap.

Now go play this game with your little ones. I hope you have an egg-cellent time!