The words

Tap any word to hear it. 26 of these 40 words are in the app, where each has its own sentence.

Dolch pre-primer, 40 words

Schools and districts choose their own sight word lists, so your child's list may differ. This is the Dolch level that is conventionally mapped to this grade.

Where the pre-K list comes from

Pre-primer is the first of Dolch's five levels and the one preschools and pre-K programs borrow. The name is literal: these are the words that appear before the primer, the very first reader. They are short, they are everywhere, and several of them are the whole reason a beginning book works at all, because a and the and is carry no picture and cannot be guessed. Nothing obliges a preschool to use this list. Many use no list at all and spend the year on letter sounds and rhyme, which is defensible and in some ways better. If your child's program has not sent a list, that is not a gap.

Five minutes a day at home

Keep it playful and keep it short. Two or three words at a time is plenty. Write a word big on a piece of paper, say it, and hide it around the room for your child to find and name. Point to it on cereal boxes and street signs. Read the same picture book often enough that your child can follow the line with a finger and call out the word when it comes. Resist worksheets. At four, the strongest predictor of later reading is not a word count, it is letter sounds, rhyme and being read to, so the sight words should be a small extra rather than the main event.

How this fits with phonics

Most of this list is decodable once a child knows a few letter sounds, and treating it as pure memorization at four teaches the wrong habit. Big, can, red, run, not and up are sounding out practice. The words worth simply learning are the ones that break the rules: a, the, to, said, one and you. The federal practice guide asks teachers to build awareness of the sounds in speech and how they link to letters before anything else, so if you only have five minutes, spend them on sounds and rhyme and let the words come along beside. A child who knows letter sounds picks up sight words far faster than one who has memorized twenty of them.

Practice tips

  • Two or three words at a time, no more. At four the point is recognition, not a total.
  • Hide a big paper word around the room and have your child find it and name it. Movement beats sitting.
  • Point out list words on signs, packets and menus. A word seen in the world counts more than a word on a card.
  • Reread the same picture book until your child can call out the word before you do.
  • Spend more of the five minutes on letter sounds and rhyme than on the list itself.

Related lists

  • Kindergarten sight words: This page prints the first two Dolch levels: 40 pre-primer words and 52 primer words, 92 in all.
  • Dolch pre-primer sight words: Pre-primer is the first Dolch level: 40 words, including a, and, I, in, is, the, to and you.
  • Sight word flashcards: Flashcards work for sight words when they are used on a small stack of words a child does not yet know, with a fixed routine and daily review.

Sources