Both in the classroom and at home there are a variety of word games and activities that will help children to improve their language and vocabulary skills.

Some children are enthusiastic readers and benefit from reading a wide range of writing styles and topics. Other children require a more interactive approach and respond more readily to games and activities.

Category and Topic Lists

Suggest a topic and list of subtopics. These can be given in a variety of visual formats including a train engine (topic) with carriages (subtopics), a ladder (subtopic on each rung), a flower (subtopics on petals) or a spider (topic) and web (subtopics spread throughout web). Children need to add as many words as possible in the subtopic sections.

Suggested topics and subtopics:

• Animals (wild, pets, large, farm, aquatic, African, flying, climbing)
• Colours (bright, dark, light/pastel, favourite, autumn, warm, cool)
• Furniture (home, school, bedroom, outdoor, wooden)
• Occupations (outdoor, uniforms, medical, computers, animals, food)
• Food (healthy, unhealthy, vegetables, fruit, dairy, favourite)

Words that Go Together

Students need to list pairs of words or phrases that relate to a given word. This may include compound words.

Suggestions:

• Story (fairy story, storybook, storyboard, story teller, same old story)
• Mountain (don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, mountain goat, mountaineer)
• Look (look around, looking glass, look here, look alive, have a good look, look after)
• Music (rock music, face the music, music box, sheet music)
• Rain (dancing in the rain, rain gauge, rain coat, rain dance, rainbow)

Word Puzzles and Games

Find-a-Word. Allow students to create their own find-a-word using a pre-drawn grid. They can use words from their school spelling list or a selection of words from a book or topic.

Crosswords. Older children can create a crossword grid using spelling or topic words. A blank find-a-word grid can be used and as words are entered, appropriate squares can be shaded in to create a standard crossword.

Tongue twisters Children love tongue twisters. Share some old favourites with them or encourage them to make up their own. Dr Seuss’ Fox in Socks (Collins, 1993) has a great selection of tongue-twisting stories.

Anagrams. An anagram involves rearranging all the letters of one word or phrase into another word or phrase. The most complex level of anagrams involves creating a new word or sentence that relates to the original. Examples: Stone Age = stage one, King Arthur’s Camelot = knight, castle, armour, saltine = entails. Challenge students to make an anagram from their own name. Example: James Stuart = a just master.

Palindromes. Palindromic words and phrases read the same forwards and backwards. Children will most easily think of simple palindromic words such as pop, peep, solos, Hannah. Examples of phrases include Madam I’m Adam, swap paws, and Dee saw a seed.

Calligrams. These are words written in a way that reflects the meaning of the word. Examples include:

• shiver written in shaky letters
• circle written in a circle or ball shape
• mountains written in a peak with ‘m’ at the base, rising in to ‘t’ at the peak and dropping back to ‘s’ again at base
• rainbow in an arch

Calligram poems are written in a shape or style that represents their subject. A poem about diamonds could be written in a diamond shape, a poem about a flower written with each line of the poem as a petal or a poem about whirlwinds written in a spiral.

Word board games such as Scrabble and Boggle can also help children to develop language and vocabulary skills.

Related articles: Antonyms, Synonyms, Homonyms, Acronyms

Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs

References:

Collins Australian Internet-linked Dictionary [Collins, 2004]

Anagrammy.com