Does the phrase “Spelling Bee” make you cringe? I still get anxiety thinking about having to spell words in front of all of my peers… and it’s been a long time since I was in grade school. When our homeschool curriculum started to suggest spelling words for my girl, the rush of nerves came back and I knew we needed a way to make spelling fun.
Supplies:
- Alphabet stamps … they come in Capital Letters and Lower-Case letters
- Playdough
- Playdough mat (plastic placemat) and roller
The idea here is that the student is playing with playdough. If that is no longer fun for your student, you might want to skip this blog. However, I have had success with this up through age ten and just simply haven’t tried on anyone older, yet.
As simple as it sounds, the “teacher” calls out the spelling word and the learner stamps how the word is expected to be spelled. You can do this at the learning phase, or the testing phase. For my student, it is way more fun to stamp the spelling words vs writing them.
Now if you truly want to gamify this experience, you’ll want to bring out a way to keep a tally. This might be using a pop-it toy and popping a bubble for every correctly word spelled until you’re out of bubbles. You could also use a sticker chart to keep your tally.
For the truly advanced and motivated learners, you could set a timer and a baseline goal: “You’ll have 15 Minutes. If you get 85% of the words correct, you’ll get a reward. You can correct any of your words within the 15 Minute timer.” I do not recommend timers for student with learning struggles or anxieties.
Drop a comment below and let me know ways you’ve found to make spelling lists fun! As always, please make learning fun!
-Brit