Will Spell For Food

Sometimes we need a little kinesthetic spelling around these parts. The kids were dragging a bit one morning this week so we opted for a snack time spelling game. Wow, who knew spelling numbers and ordinals could be so much fun! (wink, wink)

Spelling the numbers 4, 40, 44, 14 or the ordinals 4th or 40th (and so on) can be tricky. When do we drop the 'y'? Why do some of the words have a 'u' and others don't? And then what about 'for' or 'fore'? When you are working for a peanut butter pretzels the stakes are high.

Putting our pencils down and using our Banagram letters (talk about multi purpose game pieces), my star students spell the word for the number I write on the white board.

A little side note: Competition in our house is discouraged. Our big kids are so close in age and have complimentary skill sets, that if allowed them to freely compete we might have smack downs on a regular basis. And then the little guy is such an underdog there is no hope of him ever really winning much of a match against his siblings. So, we don't compete with each other, we stretch ourselves and encourage each other. (And we practice that lesson daily.)

Our game is not a race. Everybody 'wins' and everybody gets fed when the word is spelled correctly. Extra credit is awarded to the player who can tell me which letter combinations make the specified sound.

The added challenge is that these aren't even our weekly spelling words. These are just words that sometimes creep in and give us pause. This is a fun portable game that can be used for so many different spelling options.