Sight words are the words that come up constantly in every book a child reads, and learning to recognize them instantly, without sounding them out, is one of the biggest single steps toward becoming a fluent reader. Practice, the sight words game on Buildable Kids, makes that step feel like a game.
Practice says a word out loud and shows four word cards. Your child taps the one they heard. A new word gets its own moment first: big on the screen, spoken, with the tricky part glowing. A second way to play, Flash, blinks the word for a second and your child taps the one they saw.
A round is a few minutes long. Words your child gets right come back less often, and words they miss come back sooner, so time goes to the words that need it. When a word is known by heart, a bird lands on your child's wire, so even a child who cannot read yet can see the flock grow.
On the first visit a short warm-up finds the right list, so a confident reader does not start at "a." There is no timer and no score during practice, and nothing to get wrong in the warm-up.
The game uses the Dolch sight word lists, the most widely used high-frequency lists in American schools.
The Dolch list covers 220 words across five levels, from pre-K through 3rd grade. These are the words that make up the majority of running text in children's books: words like "the," "said," "was," "they," and "because." Most of them cannot be decoded using standard phonics rules, which is why they need to be learned by sight.
Some schools use the Fry list instead. The early Fry words are mostly the same everyday words as Dolch, so the lists here are a good match for either.
Five minutes a day is enough. Start with the level that matches what your child is reading in school, or drop one level below if they are finding reading a struggle. Play a round together, let your child tap the words and say them back, and stop before they get tired.
You do not need to track which words are tricky. The game brings the missed ones back on its own, a little sooner each time, until they stick.
Works on any phone, tablet, or computer. No account, no ads, nothing to download.
Set your child's name, grade, and starting level. We are opening a small beta soon.
Use the grade guides below to find the right starting point for your child. Each list links directly to the Practice game pre-loaded with that grade's words. You can also print a word list to keep on the fridge or tuck into a reading folder.
These are the words that appear on almost every page of a picture book. Many are short, common 3-letter sight words that a child beginning to read will see hundreds of times before kindergarten. Learning them now means your child can focus on the story rather than sounding out the most common words over and over.
The kindergarten list adds the next 52 most common words. By the end of kindergarten, most reading programs expect children to know all 92 words from both the pre-K and kindergarten lists. These include common verbs like "was," "went," and "want" that appear in nearly every simple book.
Grade 1 sight words include many common verbs and short function words that appear in early chapter books. Words like "could," "were," and "know" do not follow standard phonics rules, so they are learned best by sight. Mastering this list helps first graders read more smoothly and confidently.
Grade 2 sight words include longer, irregular words like "because," "would," and "their" that come up constantly in early chapter books. A child who knows all four Dolch lists has covered the words that make up roughly half of everything they read at school, which makes a real, visible difference in reading speed and confidence.
A dad built this because he was sick of the ads. There is a whole app behind it: ad-free games, and practice you set up for your own kid, with their name on it. We are opening a small beta soon.
No ads. No spam. One email when it opens.