I am a kindergarten teacher, and incoming students are not required to know sight words. This is a year-long process - and by the end of the year, depending on the school, the student should know approximately 150 sight words. (Some schools only require knowledge of 75, others require 200)

healthy's words are indeed "sight words," but not ones they expect kindergarteners to know. The words they use in kindergarten allow the kids to write beginning sentences.

My son learned these in kindergarten, he didn't already know them, and wasn't told he had to beforehand. They are words like, "it," "the," "on," "and," "in," etc.

Kiyaaabarnes: The school should provide you with the list. And if you're daughter is ready, great -- you can spend some time making a point of them when you read to her.

I'm rather surprised that you have been told that this is a requirement -- who shared this information with you? Another parent or was it actually in the paperwork you received from the school? Big difference.

You can find your state's educational laws and standards on the Internet -- I've found that its helpful to go back to the source in these types of situations.

Those words that Heathly mentioned are good ones. I was just thinking that here, by the end of 1st grade, students have to know 100 sight words....but I don't know about kindergarden.

I was remembering other words such as :a, and, have, came, could, would, should....there are many sight words.

The list of "sight" words that I'm aware of is longer and much different than the words kayrom mentioned...it usually refers to words that don't fit the normal rules of English, so you just have to memorize them by sight. (such as two, to, the)

Sometimes schools do tell parents it is required, but something like this can not be enforced. The school will not say because your child doesn't know her sight words, she can't go to school.

Sight words are the most common: I, see, like, look, the, color words, do, did, many, old....a lot of describing words.

If i were you, I would look up your states' standards for kindergardeners and see what it says.

The school's job is to teach your child to read. They appear not to succeed a lot of times, but it is their job.

Many kids show up in kindergarten having never gone to any kind of preschool, so my experience was that the first half of the kindergarten year was dedicated to teaching those kids the basics of classroom behavior -- sitting still, raising their hand to ask/answer questions, sharing, etc. -- so they don't even get too deep into the reading stuff until after the Christmas break.

For the record, the sight words (or "no excuse words" as they were called in our school) were "I, like, can, go, mom, dad, love."

i seen kids start kindergarten and didn't know nothen. sure there not picking on you. call a different school board and ask.

WHO told you your daughter needs to know her sight words? In most cases, schools are happy if incoming kindergarten children know their alphabet, basic counting, and can print their name, but they don't expect children to be reading or know their sight words. If your school told you that was a requirement, you need to contact them to get their list; it may not be the same as anyone else's. You might also want to join Greatschool's Kindergarten Parents group at community.greatschools.net/groups/11535 to see if other people have been told similar things.