Playing with Words while Practicing Spelling Skills

Summer is a good time to give your child playful and meaningful opportunities to improve their spelling skills through writing, proofreading exercises and a variety of opportunities to play with words and sounds.  Children can benefit from playing with letter/sound combinations and making discoveries about patterns of letters and sounds that make up words. Families may want to consider adding a consistent schedule of word play and spelling practice into their summer schedule. Varied repeated practice, immediate feedback, and interesting choices are built into the websites below.

www.spellingcity.com
The Spellingcity.com website is a free spelling tool that offers online spelling games, spelling reviews, and spelling quizzes. Parents/tutors can prepare spelling lists in advance if they wish. The game page option will create printable spelling games and /or online games with your custom spelling lists in order to provide repeated practice with spelling words.  Games include the following: Word Search, Unscramble, HangMouse, and Complete the Word.

http://www.kidsspell.com/
The Kidsspell site is a free site and great resource and for parents, tutors and children.  The options are varied and provide repetition and a fun way to improve spelling. Over 6, 600 words and over 400 lessons are available! You have the option to select a list or create your own list. Parents/children can save a list and play one or more of the spelling games:  Spellasaurus, Spellify 500, Cast a Spell, Letter Drop, Missing Letter Match, Scramblers, Spelloons, and/or The Spelleriums.  The spelling lessons increase in difficulty, length and number of words. Parents should be sure to read the tips on using this resource in order to know how to choose the right spelling list and starting point.  Children are able to move at their own pace and should be reminded that the goal to improve spelling rather than to see how fast he/she can move through the lessons.

http://www.funbrain.com/spell/index.html
Spell Check is one of many interesting, self-checking learning games offered by Funbrain. Children first click on a difficulty level.  The computer will provide twenty sets of four word choices.  Children check the box next to the word that is spelled wrong, type the correct spelling and find out if they were correct or not.

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/proofreading.html
SuperTeacherWorksheets.com is a great resource for parents and teachers who want to give children practice with proofreading. Their extensive collection of worksheets include spelling among other academic areas such as  language arts,, math, journal writing and grammar.  The worksheets are downloaded as PDF files and are self-checking, as an answer section color-coded in red is provided.

Parents and children should explore the above sites together and decide which links would be most helpful with meeting summer learning goals.

If your child is in need of an online tutor to help with spelling practice, find the best solution for your family here.