Games & Toys for Kids Learning How To Spell

Spelling is a vital part of a child's education, and generally, kiddos start learning to spell somewhere in the preschool/pre-k/kindergarten age (unless you're Froot Loop, who started spelling his first words at age 2...). I've found a bunch of fun toys and games that can help young kids learn to spell (which also helps them on their reading journey!) 

Snap & Learn Elephants: Join these elephants on parade, as they're bringing the alphabet with them! Kids learn their ABCs during imaginative animal play sessions with the snap-n-learn ABC elephants from Learning Resources. These educational toys for 2 year olds consist of 26 colorful elephants come with snap-together trunks and tails that make learning language skills easy and fun with every letter of the alphabet. Elephants come in five vibrant colored, orange, green, blue, and purple—and their easy-to-grab plastic construction makes it simple for little hands to develop fine motor skills during each engaging play session. The Snap-N-Learn ABC elephants also grow along with kids’ skills; once they've mastered snapping elephants together in alphabetical order, little ones may snap their elephants together to form simple words and enhance basic vocabulary skills. When play time is over, each set of snap-n-learn ABC elephants fits easily within the included tub, making cleanup and storage simple and fast. These are great for budding readers. 

Zingo Word Builder: Build reading skills, three letters at a time. This word building version of Zing is the perfect confidence booster for early readers. Ideal for players who are just learning how to put letters together to form words, it's great for teaching spelling and vocabulary. With two levels of play, it's designed to engage and support both beginner and more experienced readers. Just slide the Zinger and claim tiles to fill your Zing card with three letter words - pure Zing "F-U-N".

Bananagrams: The anagram game that will drive you bananas! BANANAGRAMS is the award-winning word game that needs no pencil, paper, or board. Players race against each other to build crossword grids and use all their letter tiles first. BANANAGRAMS comes in a small portable banana-shaped pouch so is great for travel, and is perfect for everyone 7 & up, or maybe even younger. 

Boggle Jr.: Your preschooler's first Boggle game! With Boggle Jr. your preschooler can transform letters into words with this beginning level word game for kids. Two different matching games encourage various skills and levels with cute, colorful pictures. Very young players can enjoy playing with the letter cubes as toys and finding all the letters of the alphabet on them. They can also play with the cards just to see the colorful pictures. All this play is a learning experience! Your child can practice object and word recognition, letter recognition and matching, spelling, sorting and grouping, and even practice taking turns. You can read my review about Boggle Jr HERE

Wordical: The radical dice-rolling, word-building race. Roll the vowel dice and combine the letters with the consonant cards in your hand—build the highest-scoring word and you win the round. But you’d better hurry—the last word made scores only one point. Grades 3+/Ages 8 to Adult The nitty-gritty:• Includes 108 consonant cards, 2 vowel dice, and guide• Develops word building, spelling, and vocabulary• For 2 to 8 players

Lil Speller Phonics Station: The Lil' Speller Phonics Station by VTech helps your child learn letters and their sounds one by one or build more than 200 words. Fun sounds, melodies and the animated LCD screen bring words to life.

See & Spell: Learning to spell is as easy as A-B-C with this classic wooden See & Spell! Eight double-sided wooden cut-out puzzle boards feature beautiful color illustrations of everyday objects like a bird, a bus, a pig and a fish, as well as the name of the objects. More than 50 colorful wooden lower-case letters fit into the puzzle boards to spell the words, and can also be used on their own for countless letter games and activities. The puzzle boards and letters store neatly in a sturdy wooden box. You can read my review about this fun toy/game HEREhttp://www.mamawritesreviews.com/post/88)

Scrabble Jr: What a great way for kids to play America’s favorite word game! Kid-sized words and colorful pictures make it fun to match letter tiles to words on the grid. Players move their funny tokens up the score track as they score points. When all of the tiles have been placed on the board, the player with the most points wins! Don't worry, your little ones won't outgrow this game; just turn the board over for the advanced level, where they come up with their own words. It's going to be letter-matching fun for everyone with Scrabble Junior. 

Montessori Reading Blocks: These Montessori reading blocks are perfect for the beginning reader. Your child will delight in twisting the blocks to discover new letters and lots of words, especially ones that rhyme. The blocks allow phonic practice with all 5 vowel sounds plus 13 different consonants, giving your little reader a total of 80 words to read over and over. All words are in the dictionary (some are less well known then others), and phonetic! A fun educational tool to strengthen and improve your child's self-confidence with reading. Made to replace or compliment your Montessori Three Letter Phonetic Word Cards. The letters are written in lower case D'nealian print with red consonants and blue vowels in order to match the rest of your Montessori Language materials. A must have language work for the Montessori 3-6 year old classroom. Includes: 5 Reading Block Rods with middle sounds A,E,I,O,& U. Each one is 4.5 inches long by 1 inch wide. And a list of definitions to keep your little ones informed. Made with natural unfinished Maple wood, and non-toxic water based ink and glue.

Match It- Spelling: This colorful set of three-letter and four-letter puzzle cards provides children with an introduction to spelling. They can learn to spell by associating the object with the word and correctly assembling the puzzle pieces. The puzzles are self-correcting — only cards with the correct sequence will fit together. Match It! Spelling is a fun and easy way to learn this necessary skill. The Match It! series feature self-correcting puzzle cards in a wide range of titles that introduce children to specific educational topics and skills that engage children in the learning process in a very fun and entertaining way.

3-D Letter Blocks: Kids will learn letters, the alphabet, and how to form simple words. Large stackable letters build fine motor skills. Colorful block letters feature flat fronts and open backs for dual use as letter molds. Set includes 2 sets of vowels (all the same color) and a storage bag. Individual letter are approximately 1.5” high and range from approximately 1.5” to 2” wide.

I'm looking forward to using these with my boys. Froot Loop is already reading at at 4th grade level as a Kindergartener and he's spelling way above a Kindergarten level. Cocoa Puff is just now learning how to read at age 3 and can spell a handful of words he's memorized like his name, his brother's name, red, ball, zoo, dog, and cat. I think we're at the perfect ages to use these games! 

Are you a good speller?