CHAPTER 11

Spelling

If spelling word homework, or spelling in general, is a source of tension between you and your child, you’re not alone. You don’t have to spend your time arguing, and you don’t have to stick with the old “spell them out loud” technique. Unless he’s in a spelling bee, your child needs to know how to write his words, not recite them. Instead, teach him to recognize spelling words when he sees them, make sense of them in context, and have a general idea of the definition of each word.

Creative Ways to Use Flash Cards

Flash cards may be a standard way to learn spelling words, but there are a few ways to make them a little less boring. There are two basic ways in which your child can approach making flash cards, both of which have learning benefits.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play: Handwritten Flash Cards

  1. Give your child index cards, a pencil, and his list of spelling words. Ask him to write one spelling word apiece on an index card.
  2. This will help him recognize the words in his own handwriting and help him to start forming a visual memory of how each word looks when he writes it. This is important because when it comes time for him to write, either creatively or for a school assignment, he’ll know what the word looks like in handwriting instead of just when it is typed.

How to Play: Computer Flash Cards

  1. Just as seeing spelling words written in handwriting can be beneficial, so can seeing them in print. That’s because your child isn’t just learning his spelling words to use in writing; he’s also learning them so he can understand them in the context of stories or other text he’s reading.
  2. The words may look very different in type than they do in his handwriting, so set your child up on the computer, set the font to Comic Sans 12 point (this is the font that many teachers agree most resembles handwriting), and have him type each word on its own row.
  3. Print the document on cardstock and have him cut the words apart into makeshift flash cards.

How to Play: Definition Flash Cards

  1. Create a set of flash cards, either on the computer or on index cards, but instead of writing the words this time, have your child write the definition of the word and a sentence in which he uses the word correctly.
  2. Remind your child that a word’s definition cannot use the word or any variation of that word to help define it. It’s hard to do, so you may need to have a dictionary on hand.
  3. Mark the back of these cards with a small colored dot or an X, so they can be used in Spelling Word Memory.

How to Play: Spelling Word Memory

  1. Use one set each of the word flash cards and the definition flash cards to do this activity. Shuffle the two sets of cards together and place them facedown in rows on a table or on the floor.
  2. The first player turns over two cards, one marked and one not. If the word on the nonmarked card and the definition on the marked card match, the player keeps the cards. If not, he turns them facedown again.
  3. The next player takes a turn, keeping in mind the position and what was written on the cards that were previously turned over.
  4. Once all the words and definitions have been matched up, the player with the most matches wins.

How to Play: Flash Card Tracing

This is a variation on the classic “writing your words ten times apiece” activity. Tracing his spelling words over and over with a pencil, crayons, or felt-tip markers helps him to retain the shape of the letters as well as the order in which they go.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Have your child trace the words with brightly colored markers to make the card a little more attractive. When he’s done with that, have him write his word on the back of the card, then flip it over to compare. By now he should be able to write it correctly without even thinking about it!

Create Your Own Mad Libs

Mad Libs, the classic game created by Leonard Stern and Roger Price, in which a player substitutes a list of words for words in a story, often leads to ridiculous sounding stories. The game Mad Libs got its name from the theatrical phrase “ad lib,” in which an actor doesn’t read a specific set of lines in a scene. Instead, the actor’s words, much like those in Mad Libs, are spontaneously improvised. The goal of playing this game with your child’s spelling words is to see if she is able to recognize the type (part of speech) of each spelling word. In the end, she’ll have a funny tale to tell, too.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Find your child’s favorite picture book, poem, or a passage from a book. As you come to a part of speech that could be replaced by one of his spelling words, place a piece of painter’s tape over the word, and ask him to give you a word from his list. Make sure to ask for not only a word, but the correct part of speech as well.
  2. Once you’ve replaced all the words in the passage, read it to your child to see how silly it sounds. Then peel off the painter’s tape and begin again.
  3. You can also use a website like Eduplace.com’s Wacky Web Tales (www.eduplace.com/tales/) with your child. You just have to input his spelling words, and a uniquely wacky tale will be created for you!

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Ask your child to spell each word for you when he uses it as a replacement word.

What Letter Is Missing?

This game is a variation on the classic game Hangman, and just as easy to play.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Write or type your child’s spelling list, leaving a letter or two out of each word. Your child’s mission is to replace the missing letters correctly.
  2. You can leave the vowel sounds blank to make sure your child has a grasp on which sounds each vowel makes, or, if this week’s words have a letter pattern in common, leave out that letter pattern to see if your child has made the connection.

Add-a-Letter Game

This game combines elements of Hangman and the What Letter Is Missing? game in a fun, low-key, interactive way. The game is very easy to play with a piece of paper and a pencil.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Sit down with your child, and tell her you’re going to work together to write her spelling words. Begin by writing the first letter of one of the words.
  2. Pass the paper to your child and ask her to add the next letter.
  3. She’ll then pass the paper back for you to add the next letter. This continues until the word is finished, or somebody writes the wrong letter.
  4. Keep in mind that spelling words often are grouped so that many words start the same way. If this is the case, you’ll need to tell your child which word you’re spelling or the game won’t go well.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Play the game by texting the first letter of the word to your child. Have her text back the letter you texted plus the next letter. Continue until the word is spelled.

Reconstruct the Words

This fun game involves both alphabetizing and spelling.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Have your child write her spelling list in big letters—one word per line, and with a finger’s width between each letter—on a piece of paper. Ask her to cut the list into strips of single words.
  2. Place the words faceup on the table, and challenge your child to alphabetize the list.
  3. Once she has done that correctly, cut each word into individual letters, adding swerves or jagged edges to some of your cuts.
  4. Give your child the pieces, and have her put the words back together like a puzzle.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Instead of cutting the list and each individual word into strips and letters, cut the entire list apart like a jigsaw puzzle. Once your child puts it back together, she may have a better sense of how they fit together as a group, both literally and figuratively.

Spelling Word Hangman

Hangman is a classic game to use to practice spelling words.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Provide your child with a copy of her spelling word list, so she has the advantage of being able to narrow down the words as she gets more letters in place. Write out the correct number of blanks for the word you want her to spell, and let her guess one letter at a time.
  2. Each letter she guesses correctly gets written in the correct blank, while each letter that is a miss is a prompt for you to draw a body part on a stick person (head, torso, one arm, other arm, one leg, other leg). You can also use the definition of the word as a clue if your child is stumped.
  3. The goal is for her to guess the word before you draw a whole person. Once she gets the word, ask her to use it in a sentence.

Spelling Word Songs

There’s a definite connection between music and literacy. After all, there’s a reason you can remember all the words to your favorite song from a decade ago, but you can’t remember why you walked into the next room! Putting things to music gives children a way to categorize things and keep them in their heads. Spelling words are no different.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Depending on how musically inclined you are, you can either create an original silly song to spell out her words, or just set them to an old standard like “Row Your Boat” or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
  2. If neither you nor your child is able to do that, it’s okay to chant them, too. Chant the word, then its definition, and then spell it out. You could also add a simple snap-clap beat to your chant to keep a rhythm going.

Sandpaper Word Rubbings

Sandpaper word rubbings are a fun way to combine art and literacy.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Some stores sell alphabet sandpaper stencils, but if you aren’t able to find any, they are simple enough to make. Place a piece of sandpaper with the smooth side up, and use a pencil and a set of stencils to create your own sandpaper letter stencils. Once you (or your child) have cut out the stencils, give your child a copy of her spelling word list, some blank paper, and crayons.
  2. Have her arrange the stencils to spell one of her words, and place a blank piece of paper over the stencils. Tape the paper in place, and let your child rub a crayon over the paper. (She could also use more than one color crayon to make multicolor word rubbings.) Her spelling word should magically appear!

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Ask your child to place the rubbing in groups based on words that are similar in some way. It could be by definition, letter patterns, or some other attribute, as long as she is able to explain the connection.

Glitter Glue Spelling Words

There are two ways to make glitter glue spelling words: with glitter and glue, or with glitter glue.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Begin by giving your child a sturdy piece of paper, and ask her to write her spelling words on the paper in pencil. Then she can either trace the words with glitter glue, or trace them in school glue and sprinkle glitter over them.
  2. Either way, she will have made the physical connection of tracing the letters of each word, which can help her remember them when it comes time to use them in writing. When the project dries, she will have a shiny collage of all her spelling words!

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Instead of writing the spelling words in a list or in rows, have your child turn the paper around and write some of the words sideways or upside down. The result looks more like a word cloud than a word list. A word cloud, sometimes referred to as a “tag cloud” or a “weighted list,” is a visual image or picture created by a set of words. On the Internet, word clouds are used to provide a quick visual of the words or concepts presented in an article. In a weighted list, the most important words are larger than the other words.

Build Words with Blocks or Scrabble Tiles

Some children learn by reading, some by writing, some by listening, and some by making artistic connections. Still other children learn best by involving all their senses in what they are learning. When it comes to spelling word practice, you might think it difficult to incorporate all the senses, but it’s actually much easier to create sensory experiences than you might think. Sometimes the best way to learn a spelling word list is to build it from scratch.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

Your child can build her words using alphabet blocks, magnetic letters, or word tiles (like those found in the game Scrabble). In fact, she could use almost anything to build her words, as long as she’s assembling the letters. She could also use beads, dried beans, macaroni, or even the blocks themselves to make the shape of each letter in the word.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Play a game of Scrabble using only your child’s spelling words and their antonyms and synonyms.

Build with Your Body

One really easy way to include physical activity in studying is to have your child practice her spelling words using her body. She may not be able to contort herself to make all the letters in one word, but she can practice the shape patterns of the words.

As you look over her words together, you’ll notice that some letters are tall (above the line), some letters are small (within the line), and others are short (below the line). Translate those patterns into body positions.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Tall letters are a jump up; small letters are arms straight to the side; and short letters are a crouch down.
  2. Using the word “begin” as an example, your child would: b–jump up, e–fly her arms to the side like an airplane, g– crouch down and i-n–fly like an airplane.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Involve the whole family in the building of a word. Have each family member take a letter, and try to make his or her body shape match that letter. (For instance, a t might be standing up straight with your arms extended to each side). Then stand next to each other in order to see if you have created the whole word.

Trace in Food

This may be one of the few times it’s okay to have your child play with her food.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. Let her trace her words in her mashed potatoes with her fork, or try to build them with alphabet cereal.
  2. If you’re really ambitious, ask your child to arrange her vegetables to spell out words.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Buy jam in a squeeze bottle (or transfer jam to a squeeze bottle at home) and have your child make spelling word PB&J sandwiches for lunch.

Draw in Shaving Cream/Sand

These two very sensory-intensive ways to practice spelling words may appeal to some children and repel others; it depends on how sensitive your child is to different textures.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. To draw spelling words in shaving cream, clear a space on the kitchen table. Squirt a large dollop of shaving cream on the table and let your child use his hands to spread it “flat.” Have him use his index finger to spell the words in the shaving cream.
  2. Drawing in sand is similar and can be done either outside or inside. If you have a sandbox, set your child loose and just call out the words you want him to trace in the sand. If you want to do an indoor version, fill a dishpan or casserole dish about halfway with sand, and play the same way.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

If you can’t find sand or don’t have a sandbox, give your child a stick and find an area outside that has a well-packed dirt cover. He can scratch the words into the dirt with his stick.

Spelling Word Charades

This hands-on activity is a great way to practice spelling and vocabulary words.

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play

  1. For this game, write each of your child’s spelling words on a piece of paper, fold them in half, and place them in a dish.
  2. Take turns choosing a piece of paper from the dish and acting out the word.
  3. Some words do not lend themselves well to acting out, so you may need to start those words off with a verbal cue, such as giving a synonym or antonym of the word you are acting out.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Instead of taking the words out of a bowl, give each player a copy of the list and let them choose which word to act out. That way you can also keep track of which words have already been used, making it a little bit easier to make a guess.

Spelling Word Scavenger Hunt

This game can be played in a number of different ways and has the added bonus of giving your technologically inclined child more opportunity to interact with print media!

Skills Being Practiced

What You Need

How to Play: Storybook Spelling Word Scavenging

  1. Give each player a copy of the words, a book, a pencil, and a piece of paper. Set a timer for 5 minutes.
  2. Each player must find all the words in her book, writing down the word and the page number on which she found it.
  3. The first player to finish and be verified is the winner.

How to Play: Clip, Cut and Spell

Use old magazines and newspapers to cut out the words on the list. Award bonus points for multiple sightings/cuttings of a word.

How to Play: Ready, Set, Circle!

Give each player a section of today’s newspaper. Set the timer for 3 minutes and see how many of the spelling words each player can circle.

EXTEND THE LEARNING

Keep a copy of your child’s spelling word list in your bag or in the car. See if you can find the words on signs or in stores while you are out and about.