New Zealand Sight Words – ‘Park the car’ activity

A set of ‘Park the car’ activity sheets for sight words from magenta to orange.

A great hands-on literacy activity that will engage many of your students (particularly your boys).

* Words are written with the NZ Basic Script font.
* Car parks are provided in both colour and black/white. (see photos)
* Two blank templates are provided for you to make up your own car park of words.
* You will need to provide your own toy cars, however there are some included that you can print, cut and laminate if necessary.


This activity can be played and adapted to however works best for you and your students. Two examples are:

♦ Students play in pairs and take alternate turns. Person A says “Park your car on the word did”. Person B ‘drives’ their toy car and parks on the word. Person A checks and confirms if it was correct parking or not. Students could receive a ’point’ for each one they get correct or you could simply make it non-competitive.
♦ Students play in pairs and take alternate turns. Person A drives their car into a space and says “I parked my car on the word did”. Person B checks and replies “True” or “False”. The person parking the car can try to trick the other player.

• More than one car park can be lined up to make it more challenging.
• You can send a ‘car park’ home with your students as an alternate way of reinforcing sight word learning at home.
• For reluctant readers they may feel more encouraged to participate if they get to bring in a toy car from home to use. Perhaps link it to a writing activity as well.
• It doesn’t have to be a toy car … it could be a truck, motorbike, horse etc.

High frequency words align to the NZ reading colour wheel:
♦ magenta (25 words - 3 activity boards)
♦ red (28 words - 3 activity boards)
♦ yellow (31 words - 4 activity boards)
♦ blue (37 words - 4 activity boards)
♦ green (49 words – 5 activity boards)
♦ orange (63 words – 7 activity boards)

© Suzanne Welch Teaching Resources