Summary
Time: 5 mins
Ages: Little kids to Big kids
Difficulty: Easy peasy
This spelling activity gives kids a very visual way of seeing how letters and phonic sounds are put together to build words. It’s quick and easy to set up as well as being great fun to play. If they make a mistake they just take a letter brick off and pop the right one on!
We found a set of Mega Blocks in a charity shop for a great price but you may also have old bricks in the loft or a cupboard that you could use.
You will need:
- Plastic bricks (such as Mega Blocks)
- Black Sharpie
Step 1: create the single letter blocks
Separate your bricks into piles of single bricks and longer bricks.
Write one letter of the alphabet on each of your single bricks with your Sharpie.
Use a mix of vowels and consonants and use lower case.
Step 2: write out the words
Then choose longer bricks that are 2, 3 or 4 segments long and write simple words on them.
The idea is that your child looks at the word written on the longer bricks.
He then has to find the same letters used to make up that word in the single bricks.
These letters are then put together by mounting the single bricks onto the longer bricks to build the same word.
Spelling activity 1: building easy words
When children begin phonics they learn the sounds that letters make. They then begin to join the sounds together to make simple words.
You can write some very easy two, three or four letter words on your bricks for your child to build. Choose words that are easy for your child to sound out.
Some examples are: at, cat, hat, mat, on, sun, it, pets
Your child can simply have fun building words with the bricks or they could also write down all the words they have created.
Spelling activity 2: practising tricky words
As your child learns to read there will be lots of tricky words that are hard to sound out.
Your child’s teacher will introduce the class to a few tricky words at a time.
They will have to learn how to read and spell these words by practising them again and again until they become familiar.
Building the words with bricks is a brilliant way to do this.
You could create sets of bricks with a few tricky words at a time for your child to build up.
They can then write them out afterwards to commit them to memory.
Here are some of the tricky words your child will learn:
the, he, she, we me, be, was, to, do, of
are, all, you, your, come, some, said, here, there, they
go, no, so, my, by, one, only, old, like, have, live, give, little, down, what, when, why, where, who, which
any, many, more, before, other, were, because, want, saw, put, could, should, would, right, two, four, goes, does, made, their
Enjoy these great spelling activities
