Sight vocabulary is built by meetings, not interrogations — a child needs to encounter said dozens of times in friendly contexts before it's simply known. The art of home support is engineering lots of meetings while keeping every one of them cheap. Four ways.
A bookmark carrying the current phase's words sits inside the reading book, so every session opens with a ten-second drive-by: "wave at the tricky words… okay, story." Not a test — a wave. The child who waves at they nightly for three weeks owns they, and no one ever sat through a drill. This is spaced repetition wearing a cardigan, and the reason the list must live in the book rather than on the fridge: exposure only counts where reading happens.
Tricky words are common words, which means they're everywhere — menus, signs, subtitles, birthday cards. "First one to spot a was" turns a supermarket queue into practice, with the child as hunter rather than quarry. Real-world sightings also teach the deeper lesson: these words are worth knowing because they're genuinely everywhere, not because school says so.
Writing a word is the strongest single meeting there is — the hand teaches the eye. Shopping lists ("add some… and write the for me"), birthday cards, notes to the dog: two written tricky words a week beats twenty flashed. Accept wobbly spelling of everything else; the target words are the mission.
The lists are short on purpose — six to fourteen words a phase — and a child adds them over weeks, not evenings. If a word won't stick, it's not a character flaw; park it, keep waving, and let frequency do what pressure can't. The fastest route to a child who won't read is making was into a battleground.
General guidance consistent with sight-word research and phonics practice, August 2026. CAAC.