How to intrigue kids with fun spelling games

When kids get into first grade, spelling is introduced. After learning their abc's, spelling can seem a daunting challenge. Some kids just don't get into spelling. They might just zone out, deciding that spelling is a useless endeavor. They might well decide it's not worth learning after all, they can talk, right? These kids soon fall behind and unfortunately, get it into their mind that they'll never be able to learn. Here we've got some fun spelling games to play at home with your kids, which will give them some enthusiasm for the subject.

With classroom sizes being what they are, even the teacher may give up on that child as one who just won't learn how to spell. Indeed, we all know many adults who are self-admitted 'bad spellers'. This is a shame, because everyone can learn to spell, but those who can't will be impacted throughout their life. Sure, now we've got spell checkers in word processing programs, but there are certain words, such as 'there' and 'their' which the spell checker will pass right over, but which a high school or college teacher won't miss. Misspellings in business letters or on resumes can cost you a job or a sale. As a parent, you can circumvent all of these frustrations by employing a few fun spelling games, early on.

Playing spelling games with vowels is a great introduction to spelling. Vowels are often the first clue to spelling introduced by the teacher. The problem is that the kids are clueless as to why vowels are important. Vowels separate and connect consonants. For example, if you take a look at an entire page of words, there's hardly a word which does not contain at least one vowel.

Here's a fun and easy spelling game which kids find fascinating: on a sheet of newsprint, list the vowels and make a column for each. Have your kids go through a few pages of a short story book, preferably one with rhyming words, writing each word which contains a vowel under the appropriate column. Let them know that some words contain more than one vowel and to be on the lookout for those words. When the list is complete, have the child go through and underline the vowels. Kids then instinctively pick up on the importance of vowels.

This game gets kids giggling. To stress the importance of vowels, ask them to make up words which have no vowels and then try to pronounce them. They'll easily see that it's almost impossible to pronounce such words. 'Mnghphzs', for example.

Here's another spelling game kids think is cool. On another sheet of newsprint, choose a simple word with a single vowel, one for each vowel. Cat, let, sit, dot and hut might be used. Ask them to write other words that rhyme and which they think may use the same vowel. This spelling game also helps young kids to learn to read.

Building on the previous lesson, you now have the opportunity to point out the differences between the long versus short vowel sounds.

After spending a week or so going through these exercises, give them a simple quiz, taking words from the lists they made during the week. Giving these quizzes as a low-key, non-pressure activity helps kids gain a sense of accomplishment and mastery of what they've learned.

Keep lists of words learned in the spelling games in a small binder. Upon completion of the weekly quiz, paste a silver star on the page. Upon repetition of random word quizzes, when you see your child has learned all of the words on a page, it's time for a gold star!

You'll find that when you kindle a child's enthusiasm and curiosity about words and spelling they'll start to see the value of knowing how to spell, simply because spelling games are fun. That's when it's time to have them rifling the pages of a children's dictionary, finding those odd ones out!