Word Searches For Kids

Whether you are home schooling your children, trying to help them keep up at school, or just looking for something fun to do with them, you should try some word searches for kids. These are not only fun, they are educational as well. These are things that adults do to relax, while children see them as more of a fun, game-like activity. These can be big, small, easy, or hard, but they are always fun. They can also be a sneaky way of interjecting learning into your child's day without them realizing what is going on. They just think they are having fun.

For children just learning to read and write, word searches for kids should be very small and simple. Use small words that are not longer than four letters, and put only a few in the puzzle. Keep your hidden words going from top to bottom and left to right. As your child learns to find the small words, you can hide them backwards and in diagonal form. This makes it a bit harder for them, but not too hard that they can not successfully finish the puzzle.

As they learn bigger words, you obviously want to use five and six letter words in your word searches for kids. You can make a bigger puzzle, but make sure the letters are spaced out well so that the kids are not trying to find a needle in a haystack. Use more words per puzzle than you did in the smaller one, and mix up how you are hiding them in the puzzle. For a nice twist, you can have the letters that remain after they have found all their words spell out another word or a special message. This can be a simple message like 'I love you' or something that they can learn like 'spiders have eight legs.'

When children get older, they can obviously handle larger puzzles with longer and more complicated words. You can make them with your child's spelling words week, or theme them around something else they are studying in school or at home through home schooling. These word searches for kids are a bit harder to put together, but they are very valuable in an educational sense if you have the time and the imagination to make them on your own.

You may not have the time to put these word searches for kids together on your own. That's okay, as time is a limited commodity in some homes. You can also search out some online for free, or order some in book form that will keep them busy for a long time. Once they get good at these, you can step things up and see how they fair with crossword puzzles and other types of puzzles for math as well. These are always fun, but they are always learning something as well. The Internet is full of great learning activities that you can use to help your children learn more in any subject they are studying.