You will need:

• Empty ribbon spools
• A length of dowelling, paintbrush or other wooden stick
• Black pen

Make the spools

Take some empty cardboard ribbon spools.

You will need at least 3 – 5 spools for this activity.

Write letters onto your spools, using a black pen.

Space the letters out nicely and always use lower case.

Have one spool with just the vowels ‘a, e, i, o, u’.

Then thread the spools onto a length of dowel (or a paintbrush/pencil). It’s that easy.

Now you have a super spelling spinner that your child can use to make words to read and write.

Easy rhyming spinners

When children begin to learn how to spell and build words they often start with simple three letter rhyming words, which follow the pattern of consonant – vowel- consonant. These are known as CVC words and are sets of rhyming words such as cat, mat, hat and bat.

You can make spelling spinners with three spools, writing consonants on the first and third spools and vowels on the middle one.

As your child spins the spools they will make simple words. Ask your child to sound out the letters to see what words they have created.

Some of them will be nonsense words but it is still a useful skill to be able to sound them out and good fun too. You could set your child a challenge to see how many words they can make that end with ‘at’ or ‘op’.

Longer spelling spinners

As your child begins to learn more about phonics and become more confident sounding out letters you can make longer spelling spinners, using 4 or 5 spools.

Use a mix of consonants and vowels on each so that a whole variety of different words can be created as your child spins the spools.

Writing the words they have created

To extend the activity you could ask your child to write down the words they create with their spelling spinners on a whiteboard or a piece of paper.