Activities to Enhance Your Child’s Spelling & Grammar
Children will be developing their language skills all of the time, but it can become tiring or a struggle for them to keep up with all the words and grammar they need to learn at once. To help them along the way, word games and grammar activities can make things more fun and exciting for them. Here are some activities you could try that this Sixth Form College in London recommends.
Spelling memory games
A good way to test your child’s skills will be in memory games you can pick up at any time. For instance, flashcards can be used to test your child’s spelling skills on the go. Create flashcards and write a word on it – ideally a new word that your child has recently learned. Then, when you have finished writing these words out onto a selection of flashcards, your child can get involved in the game.
Have your child pick out a card (if you shuffled them beforehand it’s even more of a challenge), get them to read the word aloud, and then say the letters of the word aloud. Once they have done this, place the word down on the table, hidden. Your child now has to write the word down on a piece of paper to see if they remember.
Rainbow writing
This will involve a selection of colourful pens or paint to write out words. Use a different colour for each letter as your child is spelling out a word.
For example:
B – red pen
R – blue pen
E – yellow pen
A – green pen
D – orange pen
To level up this activity, now you can ask your child to spell out a word for each of these letters. For example, B could be Boat, R could be Read, and so on. This helps your child think about lots of other words at the same time to further boost their memory.
Use staircase spelling
Staircase spelling is where you start with one letter and continue to increase the number of letters to finally form a word. As an example you could start with A and work your way down the alphabet, like so:
A
Ap
App
Appl
Apple
This allows children to learn more about how words are put together, especially when it comes to words that have more consonants and syllables in them.
Spelling should feel fun and interesting, so mixing things up every once in a while can help with a child’s enjoyment in this area. More activities like these can help them be more comfortable with their language skills and literacy skills. Try out these activities today to see what your child thinks!
Collaboration.