Spelling Word Ideas

Practice Sounds While School’s Out

Looking to keep your kid’s spelling skill sharp during the unexpected hiatus from school? No idea where to start, but want to give them words at their level?

We’ve started our own weekly spelling lists. Each week, my kids get ten words to practice. To come up with the words, we choose a letter or combination of letters (depending on grade level) to practice. For beginners, try consonants that only make one sound. Once they master single sound consonants, you can add single vowel sounds into the mix. 

After they get the basics down, you can start with letter combinations. Really there’s no wrong way to go about it. If you need help coming up with words, visit The Free Dictionary’s Word Finder, which allows you to search by letter combination as well as length of word. They’ve got a great list which makes it easy to put together words with similar sounds.

I have my kids come up with a starting word, then we pick one sound to emulate and brainstorm other words together.  Once we have a list, I can type it up, print out all the words, and have them cut it out to keep it handy during school work for easy reference. You can also leave space between each word so kids have room to copy them and voila! You’ve got a personalized worksheet tailored to your child’s interest and skill level.

Good luck with spelling!