Thanksgiving Color by Sight Word Printables
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Get 4 free versions of this printable Thanksgiving-themed Color by Sight Word worksheet! Each worksheet has fun seasonal imagery, and there are 4 versions for students at different levels (Pre-Primer and Primer) who are practicing decodable sight words and irregular heart words.
Why We Love It
Get the four Thanksgiving printable worksheets! There are four variations to choose from, so you can choose the list of words to best match the level of each student.
We organized these printables into four categories using the Dolch High Frequency Word Lists so you can use the printable that is ‘just right’ for each of your students. This makes it easy to differentiate these worksheets for each child sitting in your classroom.
4 Versions of the Color by Word Printables:
- Pre-Primer Decodable Words
- Pre-Primer Heart Words (Irregular)
- Primer Decodable Words
- Primer Heart Words (Irregular)
The exact same seasonal imagery is on each worksheet, including a turkey wearing a pilgrim hat, a cornucopia, and falling leaves. That makes this activity great to use alongside other Thanksgiving lessons!
So the best part is that no matter which your kids are working on, the end result (the beautiful picture!) will look exactly the same!
Heart words are high frequency words with irregular spelling patterns that must be memorized ‘by heart.’ However, portions of these words are regular and should be taught as decodable portions.
For example: Let’s take the word “they.” We hear two sounds in this word: /th/ and /ā/. The digraph TH is regular – th says /th/. The irregular portion are the letters EY because it says /ā/. We put a heart over the letters EY because it must be memorized by heart.
Most HFW are decodable. Research shows that our brains need to go through the process of making the letter-sound connections in order for these words to stick. We call this orthographic mapping. Kilpatrick (2015) describes orthographic mapping as “The mental process we use to permanently store words for immediate, effortless retrieval. It is the process we use to take an unfamiliar printed word and turn it into an immediately recognizable word.” We want kids to go through this process many times so that a word eventually becomes a sight word!
Sight words are words that we know instantly. Our end goal is that through repeated practice and lots of orthographic mapping, all of these words (whether decodable or irregular) will become sight words.
About the Worksheets
Each of the four worksheets contains 8 words, either heart words (irregular words) or regular words that can be decoded, so there are 32 words in total (half at the pre-primer level and half at the primer level).
The heart words are labeled specifically with the irregular graphemes underlined and a cute little heart above them. This shows which portion of the word needs to be memorized by heart.
Pre-Primer Decodable Words
- run
- jump
- and
- not
- up
- can
- big
- it
Pre-Primer Heart (Irregular) Words
- one
- said
- the
- two
- where
- you
- come
- look
Primer Heart (Irregular) Words
- what
- want
- was
- do
- have
- all
- they
- there
Primer Decodable Words
- went
- with
- well
- all
- get
- like
- yes
- did
Tips & Info
- As they color in each section, have students SAY the sounds/letter names of each word! We want repeated practice while engaging as many senses as possible, so simultaneous oral spelling should be used.
- For irregular words, kids can say the letters followed by the whole word: “T-H-E-Y” – “they.” For the regular words that can be decoded, kids should say the sounds followed by the whole word: “/r/ /u/ /n/” – “run.”
Related Posts
- Thanksgiving Activity Placemats
- Thanksgiving Acrostic Poem Printables
- Halloween Orthographic Mapping
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