Tricks of the Trade (Spelling Words)

Yesterday after it taking an hour for Alyssa to complete her spelling practice it hit me. Tonya Anne Cater! You have done it again! Fallen back into the same old same old of what public schools says you should be doing. Yep! Here I was once again having my 8 yr old daughter do what I had done at 8 yrs old in public school, write those dreaded spelling words 5 times each. She was bored and I was getting frustrated because she had been at it for an hour. So I said put your pencil down please. We moved on to something else. That night I decided to send google working once again for me and see if I could come up with some outside the box ideas for learning them spelling words. I am happy to say google did not let me down,lol. ( This is why I am called the google Queen) I figured how many other momma's and children out there might be just like me looking for a way to perk up the spelling practice.I might as well share some of the tricks I found.

1. invest in a set of rubber alphabet stamps and some colored ink. allow them to stamp out the words.
2. have them take a white crayon on whit paper and write out the words, then take water colors and paint the paper. Watch the words come alive.( I really like this one for Alyssa as she is my artsy child,
3. pass a ball back and forth as you spell the words, if the get it wrong have them do 5 jumping jacks( this burns some energy in the process)
4. something they call step or pyramid spelling. It goes like this, take the word Hello
h
he
hel
hell
hello.... you can also do this in the shape of a pryamid
5. use dry erase markers and write the words on windows or mirrors
6. magnetic letters and a magnetic board( a dry erase board will work as well
7. finger paint the words ( who doesn't love finger paint)
8.try color spelling....have them take 3 different colored pencils and spell each letter with a different color
9. This one will add spelling and math together... Give each letter a $ amount..ex.. A-$1,B-$2 and so on the not only spell the words they add the total dollar amount for that word,
10. use stencils to spell out the words
11. Sidewalk chalk this one is perfect on a nice day go out side and allow them to write the words on the driveway with sidewalk chalk

So as you can see I found a good bit of different ways to practice spelling words. I know I hated spelling as a child and I don't want my children to follow in those footsteps so I plan to switch it up from time to time and see what works best for them. Maybe along the way we will come up with some different ideas to add to the list.