This summer, sight Word Soccer has been a fun way to practice reading outdoors while being active!
Who can play sight word soccer?
Sight word soccer is a fun literacy game for all ages – preschool, elementary, middle, and high school!
Kids naturally love to run around and play, and games are a low-stress way to sneak in reading practice!
In addition, it was great fun for me, a 30-something-year-old mom, and I certainly could use more exercise!
Families can play this sight word game at home, and teachers can enjoy this at school.
Benefits of Sight Word Soccer
Sight word soccer is perfect for any language. Since Chinese is one of my children’s minority languages, we try to make it as fun as possible.
Naturally, everybody prefers English in our town. However, my daughter loves to speak Chinese with me because we are making special memories with interactive games like Sight Word Soccer.
Use soccer games for other languages and other skills
All Chinese characters are essentially sight words – words that require frequent review to commit to memory.
If your family speaks another language, you can focus on letters, such as in the English or Korean alphabet.
In addition, you could make a game dedicated to shapes and numbers!
Related: Sidewalk Chalk Activities: 12 Fun Ways to Play and Learn Chinese!
What you need for sight word soccer:
- Index cards
- Soccer ball
- Cones
- Painter’s tape
- Black Sharpie marker
Since we don’t have much of a yard at our home, we took our soccer ball and cones to a local grassy park!
How to set up sight word soccer:
- Write characters on index cards with Sharpie marker
- Tape cards on cones
- Take turns calling out the words and kicking ball to the chosen sight word
Following my child’s interests with Sight Word Soccer
We recently tried a 6-week 足球 (zúqiú / soccer) course to see if my 3-year-old daughter might be interested in the sport.
Of course, she was really excited about the colorful cones and her imagination was stimulated.
Pretend play while learning Chinese
To narrow the learning objective, I asked my daughter to name her favorite places and wrote each name on index cards.
Including your child with the decision-making process will make any activity easier, since our kids love to feel like their opinion matters.
My daughter chose the following places:
- 超市 (chāoshì / supermarket)
- 城堡 (chéngbǎo / castle)
- 餐馆 (cānguǎn / restaurant)
- 海边 (hǎibiān / beach, oceanside)
- 农场 (nóngchǎng / farm)
- 派对 (pàiduì)
Clear, legible signs for sight word soccer
I wrote these Chinese characters on flashcards and tape them onto the cones.
Since I want the Chinese words to stand out as the focal point, I didn’t draw any pictures, and I did not add any Pinyin or English.
Imaginative play while learning, kicking, and running!
We pretended that each cone was a different place and my daughter contributed her own creative ideas to the educational game! It was so fun to hear her express her imagination in Mandarin Chinese!
Sight Word Soccer was a huge hit with my toddler, and I hope your family can enjoy it, regardless of age! Hooray for exercising our body and brain!!!
Have you tried Sight Word Soccer in your family’s language?
If you try this outdoor literacy activity, please let us know! Leave a comment and don’t forget to tag a photo #ChalkAcademy on Instagram and Facebook.
More Chinese learning fun for kids!
For more outdoor learning activities for kids, click here!
All hands-on educational activities are organized by topic in this link. Please bookmark it for reference as you plan your learning activities!
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Michael Chang says
Great idea! My son is an avid soccer player but not fond of reading. We’ll have to try this!