Spelling Resources

Spelling City makes it easy to teach spelling.  They have a great variety of spelling lists such as colors,numbers to ten, possessives, homophones and words of latin origin.  You can just type in your spelling words and have the child be tested online, taught how to spell them or play a game with the words.

All About Spelling is a great resource for words.  They have free spelling lists for grades 1st through 7th.  They also have the Ayres Spelling scale which contains the 1000 most frequently used words and the Dolch word list which contains the 200 most frequently used words.  If you sign up for their free newsletter you will receive their free report called “20 Best Tips for Teaching Spelling”.  A great resource to have in your spelling

Spelling Time -  SpellingTime.com is a virtual spelling tutor that presents quizzes, spelling bees, spelling tests, and fun spelling games all customized to each child’s abilities.

Everday Spelling – Spelling Lists by grade.

Kids Spell- Fun spelling games

National Spelling Bee

Fun, Interactive Online Game Spin and Spell

Great games to improve spelling :

Bananagrams

Quiddler

Scrabble Junior

Boggle

Turbo Twist Spelling by Leap Frog

A New Twist on an Old Game

Have you heard of the game Bananagrams?  Well, if you don’t own it but have Scrabble in your game closet you can play it right now.

“Bananagrams has been compared to Scrabble without the board. In fact, some people use Scrabble tiles in lieu of purchasing Bananagrams. Because Bananagrams can be played by people at any reading level, the game is even good for children starting to learn how to spell, and has been touted as both educational as well as popular among consumers. An independent psychologist reviewed Bananagrams and expressed her recommendation of Bananagrams as a positive example of creativity stimulation because, perhaps unlike Scrabble, the goal is to play all of the tiles, which generates a need to configure and reconfigure one’s word grid to accept all of the letters.”

Here are the directions for play:
Rules for Banagrams

1. Place all 144 tiles face down on center of table. These tiles are referred to as the “BUNCH”. For games of 2-4 people, each player takes 21 letters from the bunch, keeping them face down. For 5-6 players, 15 letters are taken. For 7-8 (or more) players, 11 letters are taken.
   NOW THE GAME BEGINS!!!
2. Any one player says “SPLIT” whereupon all players turn their own tiles face up and proceed to form their OWN collection of connecting and intersecting words. The words may be horizontal or vertical, reading left to right or top to bottom. Each player may rearrange his/her own words as often as desired. Players DO NOT take turns, but play independently of each other and at the same time.
3. When a player has none of his/her original letters left, that player says “PEEL” and takes a tile from the bunch. At this point ALL OF THE OTHER PLAYERS MUST ALSO TAKE A TILE FROM THE BUNCH and add it to their collection of letters.
4. At any time, and as often as desired during play, any player may return a difficult-to-use letter back to the center of the BUNCH, face down, but MUST TAKE THREE LETTERS IN RETURN. The player must declare this action to the other players by saying “DUMP”. This exchange does not affect the other players.
5. Play continues until there are fewer tiles in the BUNCH than there are players. The first player with no remaining letters shouts “BANANAS” and is the winner of that hand. The other players may now inspect the winning hand for misspelled or incorrect words. Proper nouns are not acceptable. Any available dictionary may be used. If all words are acceptable, that player is the WINNER OF THAT HAND. If any word in the “winning” hand is found to be unacceptable, that player becomes the “Rotten Banana” and is OUT OF THAT HAND, and must return his/her letters, face down to the center bunch and the game now resumes for the remaining players.

Get more information and tips at the Bananagrams website.  By the way, there is a button below every post that says “print this post”.  If you click on it, it will give you a page with just the post and not all of the static blog graphics.  This way you can print out these game directions without a lot of ink!  Have fun!