A great "travelling" word game

Blog Name: Getting Kids Reading
Blog URL: http://gettingkidsreading.blogspot.com/
RSS Feed: http://gettingkidsreading.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Blog Summary: Tips, ideas and suggestions to help you get your kids excited about reading and writing.
This blog has been active since: September,2008
Post: A great "travelling" word game / December 8, 2009



A great "travelling" word game



Here's another great word game.

Our family recently travelled to Ottawa. Early one morning, we broke out a game we'd brought called Scrabble Apple.

We really enjoyed it. What I like about it is that it's portable, all of the pieces go back in the apple when you're done, and there's no board to lug around.

As a literacy tool, it's great because you can play with it any way you want. There are rules, but essentially it's just a bag of letters that stack.

The traditional rules are: You put all the letters out, and each person turns over a letter. You try to make words with your letters; you get points for every word. A red letter doubles the points.

The twist is that the letters stack. So if you had the word BAG and I turn over an E, I can create BEG by putting the E on top of the A.

While gramma may have been better at creating words, our son was faster at re-creating words - so it sort of levelled the playing field and made it really fun. It was a toss-up as to who would win.

I'm going to play this with the six-year-old I'm working with. We'll play "find the vowels." The first person to turn over the vowels and say the sounds they make will win.