What activities do you suggest for learning sight words?

Amber, you know I teach preschool age, but I'm wondering if some of these activities might help (you probably already use these, but maybe this will help):

*Sight word cards on key ring to help the children look for the words they want. You could play a game with them, like Can you find a word that starts with t and ends with e? Yes! It's "the". How many letters does it have? Yes, 3! It starts with t, ends with e, what's the letter in the middle? I'm thinking this might help him focus on the letters rather than recognizing the word as a unit.

*Alphabet blocks, you know those little square ones with the letters on them. They are usually all upper case but if he recognizes all his letters maybe you could start a word and ask him to find a letter to finish it. Like if you choose "I" he could finish with "t" or "s" or "n" and then read the word to you. Lots of opportunities for success and it would require him to see the letters and the word as a unit.

*Use cards with the beginnings, and cards with the endings, of sight words. Hand him a beginning and ask him to find the ending from an assortment layed out on the table. For example you hand him a card with a_ on it, and he needs to find either _n, or _nd from those on the table. Again, this may push him to process the letters rather than the unit.

*Hand him a sample of writing, something short, but containing some sight words you want him to be able to spell, and play I spy with it: I spy a word that starts with (a-sound) and ends with (nd-sound). When he points to it, ask how did you find it? What part says (a-sound)? What part says (nd-sound)? asking him to name the letters as he identifies them by sound. If you had multiple sentences on the page, you could give him a blank piece of card stock with a window cut out of it to move down to the next sentence as he completes each word.

*Individual letters on small cards, and the printed words on a paper so that he can look for the letters and match them to the words, saying the letters as he matches them, and saying the completed word after he has matched the letters to it.

Just some ideas that don't require writing that I thought might help. I'll continue to give it more thought and see if I can come up with anything else.

I like the Word Wall idea. You post one word at a time on a wall and continue to add words based on what you feel the ability level of the child is. Each time you review words by just reading the words on the wall and having the child repeat them until he can do it on his own. It's important to leave those words up for quite a while as you add to the list to further increase retention. You can even google Word Wall for plenty of different ways to display the words. So, as you suggested, the child does not have to write the words. For spelling, you could have the child close his eyes or turn away and try to spell the words; however, I would wait until he mastered recognizing the words first or he may become very frustrated.