Spelling Help

Has spelling become boring and somewhat grueling? No matter what workbooks you use, or even if you make your own word list from books you are reading, sometimes we just need to be more creative.

There is a time for pen to paper and copying out words, but what if we could make it more fun?

What if we could get our brains firing and connecting more efficiently?

Spelling Help

Well, we can!

We can make spelling fun and we can improve our brain function at the same time.

(In this post I am not going to cover too much about the brain part of things as that is a whole series of  different posts. 

I will, however, offer you a few examples of what we do in our home to get those spelling and vocabulary words to stick!)

Supplies You Will Need

•  Dry Erase Markers
•  Dry Erase Board (preferably with ability to adjust height)
•  A Large Window or Mirror (this will work if you do not have dry erase board)
•  Chalk and a chalkboard will work too (again adjustable height if possible)

The Fun Part!

1. Have your list of words (start with 5 words, use 1 word per day, or even just 1 word for the week)
2. Decide the order of words to be studied
3. Have your child stand nice and square to the dry erase board looking straight ahead, holding marker. (Note where their fingers are on marker, you don’t want their grip to be too close to tip, this will block their view)
4. With your finger, point to each corner of their back; as if to mark all the corners of a page. (Each shoulder blade and each side of waist, for instance)
5. Have them take a deep breath, to be relaxed and ready to go (note: relaxed but not sluggish)
   
6. With your finger tip draw the first letter on their back, and then have them print it on the board. If they are incorrect, have them erase it, remind them to clear their mind and draw it on their back once again.
7. Continue in this way until the word is spelled correctly.
8. Number each letter up above.  i.e. walk is four letters, the w will have a 1 over it, the a will have a 2 over it…etc. (this is a bit of organisation which will help them to truly learn each word)

Working through your spelling list this way can be a lot more fun for everyone!

Will you have to set aside a bit of extra time to do it?

  Yes… but you can choose to do it once per week if you want.  Or you may want to do this on Monday as an intro to their word list, then have them do their regular spelling T/W/Th and then do this fun approach again on Friday as review?

If you take the time to do this with each of your children, they will reap the benefits!  Once you have gone through this a few times your children could take turns and partner up with each other.  The ones who are drawing the letters on the back will benefit just as much as the child having to write out the word.

We even do this with our youngest, it is a great way to get those alphabet letters going!  They can just verbally tell you which letter you drew, or they can also take a turn at the dry erase board.  Once they get the hang of it, there is no reason to not start with some small words.  They don’t even have to know they are spelling.

You could draw three letters… CAT.  Then after they have it written out in front of them you could say something like:  “Look, you just wrote cat!”

For my younger kids, I tend to not focus on the fact they are spelling…I just let them have fun with letters!

Go ahead and give this a try, be patient and see where it takes you!

  I’d also love to hear how it went!

If you like this post and want more ideas on how to make Spelling fun check out my other posts I wrote:

• “Spelling Can Be F-U-N!”
• “More Spelling Fun – video”

  (These include and yoga ball and some letter tiles 🙂 )