How to Teach Your Child to Spell Words – 15 Fun Ways

Figuring out how to teach your child to spell words correctly is rarely a thought that crosses the minds of parents since it is usually considered to be the school’s responsibility. While most preschools might start coaching the children with simple words, the real learning happens when your kid comes back home and makes an attempt to recall what was taught to him earlier. Helping your kid revise his lessons with different techniques then becomes quite necessary.

Why Is It Important To Teach Spelling To Kids?

Communication is a vital aspect of our lives and spelling is essentially how language has been created in the first place. Kids need to understand the spellings appropriately.

Improved Reading

When children understand how to spell a word, they relate better to its sound and this eventually helps them read better. It is only with practice that they can improve their speed of reading and even attempt to understand new words.

Accurate Writing

Imagine if your kid begins to write messages and letters to others that is riddled with wrong spellings. Not only does it impact the image of your child, but it also hampers the growth of his self-esteem.

15 Ways To Teach Your Child To Spell Words

Teaching kids to spell out the words in the right way and repeat it without making mistakes does take time and practice. To ensure that learning to spell doesn’t get boring or repetitive for your little one, there are different ways that you can make the entire act of spelling out words entertaining for him.

1. Spell The Word, Take a Bite

While your child might pick up the spellings of many words quickly, he might find it extremely boring to keep repeating those every time. During meal times, ask your child to spell out a word and then let him take a bite of his meal. This can keep things pretty interesting.

2. Create a Context For Difficult Words

Certain words sound one way but their spelling is entirely different. Focus on the letters that are confusing and build a story around them. For example, a doctor has a “c” because he sees the disease.

3. Connecting Different Words Together

Create a game where your child begins with one word, and the next has to start with the last letter of the previous one. Each new word has to be spelt out properly, before moving ahead. Make use of paper pieces to write those words down and make the activity tangible.

4. Videos Can Make Spelling Better

You don’t have to constantly be around your child to help him learn spellings. All you need is the camera on your phone to create some nice learning sessions. Record clips of yourself or your child, where you mention each letter and the child needs to finish it by saying the word, or vice versa. Watching the clips again would be quite exciting for both of you.

5. Use Flip Cards With Images

You can make use of flip cards to play a memory based game or even make the traditional way of spelling out words more interesting. Choose words that can be represented by images and print them out on some cards. Now scribble their spellings on the reverse side or use separate cards. Your kid can either match them or choose a card and spell it out.

6. Hunt For The Word

Make use of paragraphs from books or newspapers and ask your child to find certain words in it. Spotting word patterns from numerous others is how a kid begins to understand spellings better.

7. Hopscotch With a Spelling Twist

Keep a collection of words that have as many letters as the value of the number on the hopscotch map. Give the word to your child and let him spell it out. Once he does, ask him to count the letters and jump to that particular number.

8. Spelling Ball Toss With Friends

When your kid’s friends get together, you can engage them in a game that allows them to learn spellings on the go. Call out a word and pass the ball to a kid. Each kid needs to say one letter of the word and pass the ball to another kid, who says the next.

9. Use Scrabble To Create Words

As your child starts learning more words, it is essential that his mind begins to process words and spellings differently, too. Turn the tables around by providing him with different letters and let him put them together to form a word. Making use of Scrabble for this can be quite an effective learning activity.

10. Make Use of Mobile Games

Every kid will make numerous excuses to avoid studying but hand them a smartphone and they will play with it for endless hours. Use this digital affinity to help them pick up new words and understand their spellings better. Right from Spelling City to Puzzlemaker, there are many more games out there that can help a child get better at spelling words.

11. Race To The Finish

Have two whiteboards and let each kid or team have a coloured pen. Everybody stands far away from the whiteboards. Once you give them the word, the kids need to run to the whiteboard and scribble the word correctly.

12. Making Spelling a Colourful Activity

If your child is more inclined towards colours or drawing shapes and other creatures, bring that fun element to the world of spelling as well. Let him draw an animal and then write down its name below it.

13. The Classic BINGO With a Twist

If your child is a fan of games like BINGO or Tambola, you can create a puzzle with the words he is already aware of. Create a grid and fill it with different words. The remaining spaces can have random letters. Ask your child to find a certain word in the grid and encircle it.

14. Trace, Copy, Repeat

This triple step technique is quite successful in helping kids who are struggling with understanding words and their spellings. Let them start by tracing their pencils over existing words and understanding the letters. This is followed by copying those letters exactly onto a separate page. Once that is done, hide the page and let them repeat that same word from memory.

15. One Letter Per Step

Combine the act of repeating spellings in everyday activities. While you are walking down the stairs, let each step add a letter to an existing word. For example, while spelling out “apple”, begin with “a”, then “ap”, followed by “app” and so on.

While it may be difficult to figure out how to teach spelling to a preschooler or even a kindergarten child, a better way is to understand how to teach the right method of learning for the same. Once that is resolved, your child will find it easier to remember and recall spellings of various words.

Also Read: How to Teach Phonics to Kids