Teaching And Home Schooling Ideas

Practise spellings with a fun Easter game.  Draw egg shapes onto a sheet of paper and label with a number.  However many spelling there are draw same amount of eggs.  Write each spelling word onto paper and fold up and place each spelling in a plastic egg.  Label each egg with a number.  Throw the dice (We have a 12 sided dice) and open the corresponding numbered egg.  Write the word onto the numbered egg on the sheet.  Write the word as many times as you like or write once and then again when you throw that number again. 

 Rainbow Spellings Write a set of words for spelling practise in different colours then write each word in an arch shape in a rainbow colour to create a rainbow. Looks pretty and they get to practise writing out their spellings in felt tip or gel pen colours. 

Think of a word or phrase linked to the time of year or something your child is interested in eg Harry Potter, Easter time, Happy Christmas, Animals of the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, Charles Dickens, Syrian Hamsters etc Ask your child to make words from the letters. We chose Cristiano Ronaldo and we have recently done this again in a zoom call with friends. Our words this time were Charles Dickens as we had been watching a PowerPoint about the author and doing research on Dickens.  I drew a grid with headings - 1 letter word, 2 letter words, 3 letter words, 4 letter words, 5 letter words, 6 letter words etc Write the words in the grid. Think about rhyming words eg sit, nit or toad, road, load, link, sink.  If there is a letter s then which words could be made into a plural eg toads, roads, loads, sinks, links.  We even found some homophones which we had been looking at eg hare, hair, her.  We did this challenge over a few days. We go about 40 words, ho...

Play A Spelling Memory Game. Write out the list of spelling words onto card or paper twice and cut out separately.  Shuffle the cards.  Spread out cards face down.  Turn over two cards and see if they match.  If they don't match, turn back over, face down.  If the two cards do match, the player could spell the word without looking to win the cards. 

How to play Spelling Bingo. Write your child's spelling words onto card or paper and cutout. We had about 30 words as you need some not listed on the grids.  Cut a sheet of A4 paper in half then draw a grid on each half with 9 squares.  Write 9 spelling words on one grid.  Write 9 different spelling words on the other grid. We are a family of 3 and mum was bingo caller, with dad and son playing with a spelling bingo grid each.  The caller picks a word off the pile and reads it out.  If the word is on your grid, use a dabber or felt tip to cross it off. (We just looked for the word as it was the first time we played, another time you could spell the word out without looking and if correct you can cross it off the grid.)  First one to cross all the words out, shouts bingo! We had great fun and took it in turn to be bingo caller. 

We have the bananagram word game at home. Give each person 21 letters and then they make as many words as they can out of them, forming their own crossword style pattern with the words. You can swop letters with the main pile but the rules say if you put a letter back, take 3. It's a good way to generate words and learn spellings. You could have a dictionary on hand to check spellings of tricky words are correct. If you don't have this game, any word game with letter tiles is good to play this. Or you could write letters on white card and make your own letter tiles so you can play.

Learn spellings playing hangman game. We have a list of Year 3/4 common  exception words to learn so we have played hangman to practise them. Write the words on card and then take it in turns to pick a word and get the player to guess the word picking letters from the alphabet. We talked about vowels - a, e, i, o, u, and commonly used letters eg s, t, p, r, f, d, b etc Thomas wanted to think of his own words, not his spelling words so we went with it. I used the spelling words for my turn. Thomas really enjoyed this game and we spent about 45mins playing it and he wanted to play it again the following day.

Play snakes and ladders to practise spellings. We have a list of Year 3 / 4 Common Exception words. We are trying hard to learn these words by playing Snakes and Ladders.  I wrote all the spellings onto card. When it's your turn, roll the dice and opponent picks a card and you have to spell it correctly before you can move, or before you go up the ladder or to avoid going down the snake. I sometimes spell the words wrong to talk about how they are spelt. A friend and her daughter made their own snakes and ladders sheet before they started and it's now their favourite activity to do! Who knew spelling practise could be so fun! 😂🤣

Learn spellings with a spelling dice game. Divide an A4 sheet into six columns. Draw one dice face at top of each column and put a different number on each dice face. Write words in the columns from your child's spelling list (could be reading list if your child is younger). We made this game a few years ago. To play, roll the dice. If you roll a one the other player takes the sheet and picks a word for the player to spell from the one column. If they spell it correctly they get a point. Take it in turns. If they spell the word wrong then look and talk about how they spelt it wrong and how to spell correctly. (Adult could get some wrong on purpose to talk about how to spell correctly.) If reading then pick a word for the child to read, get a point for reading correctly. Could tick words as read them.

You can get your child to practise their spellings by writing them into a word search grid. Draw a grid or print one off the Internet. Fill in the grid with the words your child is learning one letter in each box. Words can be written forwards, backwards, across, diagonal. Can make it as simple or as challenging depending on your child. Once all words in grid fill in the remaining squares with letters from the alphabet. Write the spelling words at the side of the sheet. A few days later they can try to find the words.