SpellChirp

52 words · ages 5–6 · kindergarten and Year 1

Dolch primer: all 52 words

Fifty-two words, and the first ones that break the rules — was, said, they. Every word is below — copy them, print the page, or tap once to have SpellChirp hatch the lot with definitions, audio and syllables.
  1. all
  2. am
  3. are
  4. at
  5. ate
  6. be
  7. black
  8. brown
  9. but
  10. came
  11. did
  12. do
  13. eat
  14. four
  15. get
  16. good
  17. have
  18. he
  19. into
  20. like
  21. must
  22. new
  23. no
  24. now
  25. on
  26. our
  27. out
  28. please
  29. pretty
  30. ran
  31. ride
  32. saw
  33. say
  34. she
  35. so
  36. soon
  37. that
  38. there
  39. they
  40. this
  41. too
  42. under
  43. want
  44. was
  45. well
  46. went
  47. what
  48. white
  49. who
  50. will
  51. with
  52. yes

Practise these 52 words, free

One tap puts the whole list in the nest. Each word arrives with a definition a child can read, audio and its syllables — then SpellChirp reads them out, marks the spelling and brings back the ones that went wrong. No account needed to start, and no advertising on either plan.

Add all 52 wordsPrint a practice sheet

Where this list comes from

Compiled by Edward William Dolch in 1936 from the words most common in children's books. Long out of copyright and in the public domain.

The 220 words that make up around half of everything a child reads, plus 95 picture nouns. Most cannot be sounded out — they have to be known on sight, which is why they turn up in spelling homework year after year.

How to practise a list this long

Not all at once. Five to ten words a week is the pace that sticks; a list of a hundred is a term’s work, not a weekend’s, and a child who meets ten words five times learns more than one who meets fifty once.

Sight words are the ones that cannot be sounded out, so sounding them out is the wrong tool. Look at the shape of the whole word, say it, cover it, write it — then check the letters against the original rather than the sound.

Count a word as learned when it has been spelled correctly on three separate days. That is the rule SpellChirp uses, and it is roughly where a word stops needing to be looked up.