Dolch Grade 1 Sight Words Set 2

KNOW begins with a letter that makes no sound at all. The K sits silently at the front, a quiet survivor from older English, and a child has to learn to look past it to the word underneath.

This second set of Dolch Grade 1 sight words gathers a family of small pronoun-like words — HER, HIM, HIS — alongside words with long-O sounds like OLD, OPEN and OVER, and the silent-K surprise of KNOW. These are words a first grader reads constantly, and noticing the patterns among them makes the whole group easier. The word search brings all fourteen together for thoughtful practice.

HAS · HER · HIM · HIS · HOW · JUST · KNOW · LET · LIVE · MAY · OF · OLD · OPEN · OVER

Families hidden in the list

There’s a pleasing order beneath this set if you look for it. Three words — HER, HIM, HIS — sit close together as the pronouns of everyday speech, all three letters long, all beginning with H. Three more — OLD, OPEN, OVER — all start with O saying its long name. The grid quietly clusters words by their starts, which is exactly how children’s eyes will learn to scan them in real reading: not letter by letter, but by the first sound that pops out.

KNOW is the surprise here. The K is silent — the word sounds like “no” — and it belongs to a small family of silent-K words that all start with KN. KNEE, KNIFE, KNOCK, KNOT, KNIGHT (this one will return as a UK homophone). Once children see the pattern as a family of about ten common words, the silent K stops being a quirk and starts being a feature: when you see KN at the start, the K stays silent every time. The KN family appears more formally in Series A puzzle S44; meeting it gently here gives Grade 1 children a head start. OF is the other oddity worth noting — spelled with F, said with V. “Off” rhymes with COUGH; “of” rhymes with LOVE. Same letters, two pronunciations, one is regular and one isn’t.

Five to dwell on while searching

1. KNOW has a silent K. Cover the K and read NOW (which is also in this grid!). Same letters minus one, completely different sound. Tell your child: silent K at the start is a small family — KNEE, KNIFE, KNOCK. Once you know the family, the silent K is no longer a surprise.
2. HER, HIM and HIS are the H pronouns. Find all three. Same start, same length, similar meanings. The grid clusters them on purpose — learn one and the other two follow.
3. OF and OFF are one letter apart. OF is in this grid. OFF is in the Grade 2 list. Tell your child: one F is OF, two Fs is OFF. The single F says V; the double F says F. A grammar word and a direction word, side by side.
4. OPEN and OVER both start with long O. Find both. Look at the first letter — the O says its name in each. Same pattern in OLD. Long O at the start of a short word: a tiny rule worth noticing.
5. JUST is doing real work. Find it. Then ask your child to use it in three sentences: “I JUST woke up”, “that’s JUST right”, “I want JUST a little.” Same word, three meanings — vocabulary stretching at sight-word level.

An attentive way to use it

As a same-start sort starter. Write the fourteen words on the board and ask children to group them by first letter. H words (HAS, HER, HIM, HIS, HOW), O words (OF, OLD, OPEN, OVER), J/K/L/M words (JUST, KNOW, LET, LIVE, MAY). The grouping itself teaches the most useful early reading habit: starting with the first letter and predicting from there.

As a silent-K family hunt in pairs. Pairs find KNOW in the grid and list every silent-K word they know: KNEE, KNIFE, KNOCK, KNOT, KNIGHT, KNEW. The family is small — maybe ten common words in all of English. Treating it as a closed group rather than an exception makes the silent K easy to live with.

One-to-one at home. For parents teaching reading at home, this set is built for the daily commentary game. Spend five minutes today saying things about people using HER, HIM, HIS: “Dad HAS HIS coffee. Mom forgot HER keys. The cat is on HIS bed.” Your child finishes each sentence using the right pronoun. Grammar arrives early, used not labeled, and the spellings stick because the words are doing real work.

What comes next

• Dolch Grade 1 Sight Words Set 3 — the “th” cluster and the silent-L of WALK
• Dolch Grade 1 Set 1 — the previous puzzle in the series
• All spelling word searches — the full collection across phonics, sight words and statutory lists

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