Games to Teach Children Spelling

Here's a list of games to teach spelling to children. They'll help them learn and have fun at the same time!

Reviewed and approved by the psychologist María Alejandra Castro Arbeláez.

Written by Elena Castro

Last update: 27 December, 2022

Using games to teach children spelling is a great idea since they’ll have fun while they learn. Additionally, games have other benefits: they improve teamwork, communication, memory, and logic. 

There are many game options to teach children spelling. We can choose depending on the purpose, the number of players, or the spelling aspect that you want to review.

The best thing is that they can play these games at school or at home and everyone can participate. The most important thing is for them to have fun in order to absorb knowledge in a natural way. After all, children learn by exploring their surroundings. 

Examples of games to teach children spelling

There are different types of memory (linguistic, visual, etc.) and games help to develop them. This point is of special importance since they’ll be part of the children’s study techniques later on. 

You’ll find many games to teach spelling (the limit is your imagination), but here, we’ll show you some of the most interesting proposals.

Hangman

Think of a spelling rule and only mention it to one player who will think of a word that follows the rule. The rest of the players will have to guess the word and the spelling rule that it follows.

It seems like a simple game, but everything requires a technique. The little ones will have to associate the name of the letter with its spelling; a simple way to correct speculative writing or dyslexia. Meanwhile, the older ones will focus on remembering the spelling rules to discover the hidden word.

Alphabet soup

Searching for words written in alphabet soup is easy, but what if there were only drawings? Maybe it’s not so easy to differentiate between the words see and sea. 

To complete this game you will have to search in the alphabet soup for the word that corresponds to each image and write it next to it. Homophonic words will be their greatest difficulty. Also, if you find it’s too easy, you can use definitions or examples instead of the images.

Find the errors

Do you want your children to be the Sherlock Holmes of spelling and not misspell any word? This is a complicated activity and they’re sometimes too lazy to do it; hence, the right setting is key.

1. Come up with a detective story that immerses them in the activity. For example, a thief has left messages full of spelling mistakes and they have to find them all to catch him and recover the loot.
2. Use a bit of audacity to encourage creativity through interpretation. Give them some magnifying glasses and flashlights to look for hidden messages in their mistakes.
3. The reward. Depending on how they did it, they’ll have a medal corresponding to the spelling level of Sherlock, Watson, or detective.

Card games

They stimulate visual memory and association. If we talk about card games, there are many possibilities that can be easily adapted according to the children’s level.

On the one hand, we have the famous flashcards. These are learning cards and each one can have a word, a drawing, or a concept. You can choose a spelling rule so that they can give you examples or words to spell.

On the other hand, we have games of pairs. Who hasn’t played at finding the pairs? Children can match homophones, each word with their drawing or an example with a spelling rule.

If you want to complicate it further, take advantage of the words that change according to their definition. Will they differentiate “lie” from “lie”?

Interactive or traditional games to teach spelling?

All these games that teach children how to spell have their interactive version. Moreover, they usually have different levels of difficulty and are divided into categories according to spelling standards.

However, if you opt for the traditional version of the games, you’ll also encourage your children’s creativity and communication. Why? It’s very simple: they have to create their own game and determine the rules that they’ll play with. Besides that, if they play as a team, their skills will multiply. 

What’s the best part? In both cases, they develop and manage their competitiveness and knowledge while having fun with spelling.