Does the thought of spelling practice make you shudder? With crumpled spelling books to sift through and seemingly endless word repetition, you’re not alone!
Luckily, there are lots of fun spelling activities that you can use to liven up your child’s learning. These ideas are perfect for children in KS2 (Years 3-6) — why not take a look?
Fun spelling activity ideas for KS2
1. Rainbow words
With spelling, repetition is key. But rather than writing out the same word lots of times on a piece of paper, why not use a colourful rainbow?
This activity is specifically designed to encourage daily practice, making it a great way to learn tricky words.
- Print out an image of a rainbow on a piece of A4 paper. Or, encourage your child to draw their own, leaving enough space in between each band of colour to easily write words.
- Encourage them to take a few minutes each day to fill in a band of colour by writing out the word they’re learning, starting with red.
- They’ll write the word fewer times each day as they work through the rainbow. Once they’ve completed their rainbow, challenge them to spell the word without looking!
2. Spelling scramble
This activity is perfect for more confident spellers. To get started, write out lots of letters onto squares of card or paper — or, for speed, you could hijack a game of Scrabble and use the letters from it!
Once you have a large collection of letters, ask your child to see how many words they create using them. You could also set them additional tasks for each word to explore them further, such as:
- Can you spell a word that rhymes with this one?
- How would you spell the plural version of this word?
For a further level of challenge, you could also include capital letters, hyphens and apostrophes in your mix of letters.
3. Use DoodleSpell
With DoodleSpell, you can instantly transform your spelling lists into sets of interactive exercises.
Simply copy and paste your list of words into Doodle’s easy-to-use online hub and watch them appear in the DoodleSpell app!
Alongside this, the app also creates sets of personalised sets of exercises for each child to enjoy, ensuring progression in spelling.
Why not download the app and try it for free today?
Find out more about DoodleSpell
4. Spelling staircase
This method is ideal for children learning a word for the first time or for breaking down more challenging spellings.
Ask your child to write the first letter of the word they’re learning. On the line below it, ask them to write the first letter followed by the second, and so on until they’ve written out the whole word. For example:
Y
Ya
Yac
Yach
Yacht
5. ‘What am I?’ quiz
This game is great for those who love puzzles. Challenge your child to not only spell a word correctly, but to also guess what it is through the use of clues!
We recommend giving three clues as to what the word could be. For example, if your word was ‘bell’, you could say:
- It’s an object that makes a noise
- Lots of people have them on their front doors at home
- It rhymes with ‘smell’!
Reward them with a point for guessing what the word is and another for spelling it correctly.
6. The speediest speller
Finally, here’s a game that’s perfect for groups of two or more children. Give every learner a whiteboard and, when everyone’s ready, say a word out loud. The first child to spell the word correctly earns a point.
Gradually increase the difficulty of words as you go, and make sure to show the correct spelling of the word at the end of each round. Be sure to celebrate everyone’s hard work and determination at the end of the game!
Learn spellings with DoodleSpell
DoodleSpell is the personalised learning app revolutionising the way children learn spellings.
Rather than simply teaching spellings, DoodleSpell helps children to understand the meaning behind words and how to use them in sentences, giving them a solid foundation to build on in school.
Plus, it’s filled with thousands of interactive exercises, educational games and virtual rewards, ensuring that spelling practice is always fun and engaging. And most excitingly, you can try it for free!
Or view DoodleSpell for schools
