Kids learn better when they are having fun. By offering our children games and activities that help them work on literacy and reading skills we give them an advantage over traditional teaching methods by helping connect more neurons in the brain allowing them to better remember the things we are teaching them. These fun games will help build your child’s reading and literacy skills, keep them occupied, and even get them up and active while learning boring sight word lists.
As a qualified teacher, I have taught many children and those who are good strong readers will always have a head start. The more your child reads the better, this is true of all ages and the power of reading must not be forgotten. If you want to understand how to improve reading skills, this post is for you. If your child finds reading challenging then there are great programmes about for struggling readers too. It is worth investing the time reading with your children every single day.
Literacy games on the go
Say it Fast – Say it fast is a simple game you can play anywhere that helps your child learn to connect sounds together and compound words together. You can play it anywhere making it a great boredom buster for when you need your child to wait patiently. Whether it be in line at the supermarket or sitting in the doctor’s office you can use this one to help build your child’s literacy and reading skills. Even better, you don’t need anything on hand to do it.
Split this game into two sections, sounding a word out and compound words.
Sounding out a word. To work with your child on this skill slowly say a word like “Sssllllooowwwlllyy” and your child responds by saying “slowly” fast. This can be done with any word and helps your child learn how to convert sounding out words into actual words when they are reading.
Compound words. Another area children need to learn to connect sounds is with compound words. For this, you call out two words that combine into one like “ham” and “burger” and your child calls back “hamburger.”
Eye spy
For another easy, on-the-go reading skills game you can turn a classic game of Eye Spy into a literacy game to work on your child’s reading skills. Instead of calling out the usual colours, you can opt to call out a letter. “I spy with my little eye something that starts with C” and your child would look around the room to find a “Chair.”
You can take this game up a notch and have your look for a word instead of an item. This is great for rooms full of signs or posters. Like on a healthy food chart at the doctor’s office you would say “I spy a word that starts with F” and your child would find the word “Fruit” on the poster.
Board Games for working on literacy skills
Board games are a great way to get kids learning while keeping them busy when you need a moment. They are great for playing and spending quality time as a family as well. Keeping board games that work on literacy and math skills handy is a great way to get plenty of practice in for your child without them realizing what they are doing.
Scrabble is a great game for teaching kids literacy and reading skills. For young kids, you can get Scrabble Jr to bring it down to a younger level. This game makes your child think about the letters and how they form words. While primarily a great tool to work on spelling it can also be a major blessing for building up reading skills. This is the game I played most in lockdown with my daughter.
Boggle challenges your child to look at letters and find words. This can be a fun way to work on literacy skills with a little friendly competition. Even young kids can pick up new words from helping an older sibling play and there is a Jr version for getting younger kids involved.
Literacy and reading skills games that you can make yourself
Some games can be made by hand or printed up on cardstock to work on specific word lists like sight words or even your child’s spelling list to help them see the words repeatedly for aiding in memory of how the word is formed. While these games are recommended for sight words you can use them for any list of words.
Sight word fly swat
Grab a fly swatter from your local pound shop to have fun with this game. Write your list of words out onto index cards, sticky notes, or large squares of cut paper and attach them to the wall. The call-out sight words and have your child race to hit the right word as fast as they can. If you can pin two kids with a similar reading level against each other this can be very entertaining ads they work to compete to see who can fight the sight word first.
Sight word memory match
Write your child’s word list onto an index card. Write two cards for each word. After you have put together your set, have your child play a memory match with your word list. This can be done with a few of the words and slowly adding in another couple of words each round until your child is playing memory match with the entire list of sight words.
For more posts on reading check out How to Choose the Right Books for Your Child’s Reading Level and for Maths STEM Home Learning Activities that Children will Actually Enjoy!
