As part of her weekly homework routine Immy (who’s now 6 1/2 and in first grade) has a list of spelling words to revise each night and on Thursday nights she has a mini test, where I call out the spelling list words for her to write. For some time now we have been pretending that I am a game show host and making this spelling test into our very own quiz show! Instead of simply calling out the words, I call out clues and Immy has to solve the clue, guess the word and write it in her workbook. It adds an extra element of fun to her learning which helps to make a repetitive task more exciting, in turn increasing the level of motivation to learn.
With Christmas just around the corner, I decided to take this idea one step further and create this fun Christmas Tree Spelling Quiz to help in our revision.
It was so simple to set up and Immy had fun playing along. Not only was she required to spell, she was also reading and problem solving – and the whole time she just thought it was a fun game.
To make the tree I used some coloured post-it notes. I placed a series of blank notes into the following formation.
Then I wrote the series of clues on a second set of post-it notes and stuck one on top of each of the blank notes.
Immy read each clue and then lifted the top post-it note to write her response on the blank note underneath.
She needed a little help with reading a few of the words in the clues, and may have needed an extra hint for one or two of my rather abstract clues but it certainly made for a fun twist on our regular spelling revision!
Check out these other fun word games for early readers and writers…
Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
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