The words

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

A ready-made first deck: Dolch pre-primer, 40 words

Make cards for these, then set aside every word your child already reads in about a second. Whatever is left is the actual deck, and it should be three to five cards at a time.

What makes a flashcard work

The Institute of Education Sciences practice guide for kindergarten through third grade lists flashcards as a way to teach and practice high-frequency words, and it is specific about how: show the word, pronounce it, have students repeat it, spell it, then say the whole word again, then mix the cards up and practice until recognition is quick. It also says to select a small number of words students have just met rather than working from a large set. Johns and Wilke describe the same routine and add a useful test: if a child recognizes a word within one second, count it as known. That one-second rule is what turns a pile of cards into a method.

Five minutes a day at home

Write the words on index cards. Read them with your child once and split the pile in two: known in about a second, and everything else. Put the known pile away. Take three to five cards from the other pile and run the routine: show, say, repeat, spell aloud, say whole, shuffle, repeat. Keep going until each card comes back fast. Tomorrow, start with those cards, then add three to five more. Keep learned cards in an envelope and unlearned cards clipped to the outside. Once a set is secure, lay four cards out and make a sentence from them, because reading them in a row is the real skill.

How this fits with phonics

A flashcard is a practice tool, not a teaching method, and the difference matters. The federal guide puts flashcards inside its decoding recommendation, alongside teaching children to blend letter sounds and to recognize spelling patterns. So the card is for building speed on a word your child can already work out, or on the few letters in an irregular word that genuinely have to be learned. If a child cannot decode the word at all, more card exposures will not fix it; the letter sounds have to come first. Used in that order, cards are quick, cheap and effective. Used instead of phonics, they teach guessing.

Practice tips

  • Split the pile by the one-second rule before you start. Anything already fast goes back in the box.
  • Never work more than three to five cards in a session, however well it is going.
  • Follow the full routine each time: show, say, repeat, spell aloud, say the whole word, shuffle.
  • Start tomorrow's session with today's cards. Without the review the gain leaks away.
  • Lay four learned cards in a row to make a sentence. Reading words in sequence is the skill the cards are for.

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 sentences: A sight word sentence is a short sentence built almost entirely from words a child already knows, so the new word is the only hard thing in it.

Sources