Fun & Engaging Ways to Practice Spelling Words

When I was in school I remember writing each of my spelling words five times each.

B-0-R-I-N-G

Take the boring out of spelling and try some of these activities instead! Some of them are super easy, and some are more challenging and require critical thinking.

Forget boring spelling activities. Here is a list of 12 fun and engaging spelling activities which kids love!

Hopefully out of these 12 activities you can find at least one new one!

Rainbow Words

Rainbow words are easy and fun. Write your words in three different colors so it looks like a rainbow. You can write them in pencil first and trace over them in three different colors if you want as well.

Choo-Choo Words

Choo-choo! Write all your spelling words one right after the other, end-to-end, as one super long train, using different colored markers or crayons for each word. You can even have your students make a super duper long train by writing the words several times.

Difficult to Easy

I love for my students to do this spelling activity because it really makes them think about what words are hardest for them to spell. And it also helps you as the teacher to see which spelling patterns are hard for your students. All you do is write your spelling words from the most difficult to the easiest. Easy peasy but still making your students think!

Silly Questions

Write a silly question for each of your spelling words. Be sure to underline your spelling words so it’s easy to find them. You could also do “silly sentences”.

Chant

I love putting things to music or chanting them, especially to a beat. For this one, students chant their spelling words, spelling out each word. It can be to a specific beat or not.

Shaving Cream Spelling

This one is a student favorite! I taught 3rd grade years ago, and I keep in touch with one of the students from that class (she’s 29 now….which doesn’t make me feel old at all…hah). She still remembers shaving cream spelling as her all-time favorite activity. I did this in my classroom, and the shaving cream worked perfectly on the desks. However, since your students will probably be doing this at home, I suggest putting down big sheets of wax paper on the kitchen table. Basically you just squirt out some shaving cream and have fun spelling your words!

You can use your fingers…which of course is the most fun.

Or you can use a utensil like a plastic chopstick like in this example.

Triangle Spelling

Triangle spelling is so fun! You write your words in triangles, writing one line at a time. Be sure to teach your students to write one line at a time like B ~ B-R ~ B-R-E ~ B-R-E-A ~ B-R-E-A-K and not B-B-B-B-B going down and then R-R-R-R and then E-E-E and then A-A and lastly K. Writing it line by line helps teach the spelling word but doing down by repeating the letters does not.

Add ‘Em Up

Let’s bring a little math into practicing our spelling words! If consonants equaled 10 and vowels equaled 5, how much would each word be worth? Then add up the values of each word.

Antonyms

Write an antonym for each word. Simple yet effective! You can also write a synonym for each word.

Material Madness

Instead of writing your words with markers or pencils make your words out of a material like yarn, pipe cleaners, beads, cereal, play dough, etc. Your kinesthetic learners will love this one!

This makes you want to go play with yarn, doesn’t it?

Word Scramble

Just write each word and then scramble it.

Parts of Speech

With this one of course your students would need to understand the parts of speech but what a great way to incorporate grammar into spelling! You just classify the words according to the part of speech.

I incorporated all these activities along with many others in my Spelling Choice Boards. There is one choice board for every month, with four different levels of activities to choose from. The easy and simple activities are in level one, and the most challenging or critical thinking activities are in level four. My students LOVED choice boards!