Play a matching game
How you can help at home: Try this fun game that helps students think about how words are related.
By Karen Heath, Consulting Educator
Reinforce your child's recognition of spelling patterns and different spellings for words that sound the same. Create this fun game that encourages him to think about how words are related.
What you'll need
- A set of index cards
Here's how to do it
Have your child think about words in different word families, for example eight and weight or nation and station. Be sure to include homophones (words that sound the same, but are spelled differently). For example, "You're going to love your new Legos. Or "I had to wait to check my weight."
Give him a sentence, and then ask how each word would be spelled.
Then make flash cards out of index cards with these words. Add other words that could be matched up, and play a matching game based on the sounds or the spelling of the words. Be sure to discuss your child's thinking about the word relationships as he makes a match. Your child will be practicing reading and spelling at the same time.