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home / Blog / early literacy / a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

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May 26, 2011 by Teach Mama 25 Comments

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a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO | teachmama.com

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, we’re all getting antsy for summer.

So I’ve had to be super crafty during our work time in order to keep Maddy, Owen, and Cora engaged and excited.Ā  As I’ve said before, most days I go with whatever Owen and Cora are up for doing, but at least 2-3 times a week I sneak in some deliberate math or literacy learning.

This week and last, I’ve hit the jackpot with a game that everyone wants to play–Maddy included.Ā  WORDO! WORDO! totally rocks because it’s so completely adaptable to just about every game you need, similar to our pal, Tic-Tac-Toe. We’ve used WORDO! to practice Maddy’s spelling words (a very difficult list. . .), to practice sight words with Owen, and to practice letter writing and recognition with Cora. All at the same time.

I haven’t pulled out WORDO! for ages (gulp! it was the summer before Maddy entered kindergarten!), but when I finally did, they all loved it.

WORDO! is crazy simple. Here’s what we did:

  • WORDO! (to practice spelling words, sight words, letters–or just about anything!): All you need to play WORDO! is a board and some cards to flash.

You can download the wordo boardsĀ here as a pdf, and there are four boards in the document.

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

 

Maddy plays WORDO! to practice spelling words.

To play WORDO!, every player gets a board. These WORDO! boards have nine boxes, 3 x 3.

And then depending on what your focus is–spelling words, sight words, letters, numbers, family names, whatever–each person chooses nine words from a set of flash cards to write in the boxes. A different word goes in each box.

Then, just like BINGO, someone flips the cards, and when a word is chosen that’s on your board, you cover it up. We play that a full board wins.

Maddy remembered playing the game, so when I suggested that Owen, Cora, and I play while Maddy finished her homework, she said, Noooooo! I want to play. Pleasepleaseplease? I can do my spelling words! It’ll be perfect.

So that’s what we did. She took a break from her work, got her spelling word cards, and chose nine words for her board.

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

Owen chooses the sight words he wants for his WORDO! board.

While Maddy wrote her words, Owen chose nine words from his early emergent word list.

When he was finished, I gave him high fives, and then I placed 3-4 word cards next to the board. I said, You did a great job, Owen, writing these words, but take a minute to double-check these three (or four) words before we begin.

I did this so that he was checking his work and so it wasn’t me who was saying, Oh great job but this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong. . .

Presenting kiddos with something along the line of ‘check your work‘ helps them recognize their successes (Hey! MY word looks just like the word on the card–I’m CORRECT!!) and it helps them recognize when they need to revise (Whoops–there’s an ‘n’ instead of an ‘m’ at the end of ‘can’; I better change it!).

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!Ā a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

Owen checks the words on his board. . .

. . . and here he’s playing game 2 (or 3 or 4)!

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

I pulled nine uppercase alphabet letters for Cora to use for her WORDO! boards. The first time I pulled the letters of her name, and several letters I knew she frequently mixed up (M/ W) and then some ones I knew she could write easily (O, X, P).

I wanted her to practice the letters of her name, I wanted to challenge her a little, and I wanted her to have some certain successes.

 

So after each board was created, Maddy, Owen, and Cora each had a small pile of 12 cards next to them.Ā  Nine of the cards were definitely on their board, and the three extra would throw them off a bit, mix-up our game a little.

Once everyone was ready and had nine markers–either ‘gems’ from our gem jar, beads from our bead box, or a combo of both.Ā Ā  I’d say, Okay. . . FLIP! and they’d flip a card, search for it on their board, and cover it if they had it. That’s it.

And the first person to fill his or her board yelled, WORDO! as loud as he or she could. (I secretly think this was everyone’s favorite part.)

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

 

Cora carefully covers the letters on her board.

Ā a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

So we played WORDO! for a few days last week and a few days this week, and the kids have been happy. I’m betting the long weekend ahead will knock us out of our WORDO! craze, but if it doesn’t, we’ll just keep playing.

I like it because it works for everyone–Maddy, Owen, and Cora, and though it was tough at first to get everyone into the swing of flipping together, we have it now, and it’s cool.Ā  Everyone waits, everyone helps, and everyone celebrates. . . most of the time.

a game for practicing spelling, sight words, or letters: WORDO!

Sometimes we mix it up, and here’s how:

  • we use M & M’s for our markers (looove this one!)
  • they write with rainbow colors on their board
  • they choose each others’ words/ letters
  • they flip for each other
  • they use stickers as markers. . .

Our summertime plan is to:

  • introduce Owen to theĀ upper emergent words
  • maybe throw in an early fluency wordsĀ or evenĀ fluency words
  • review Maddy’s spelling words–pull from the lists she’s covered this past year
  • use alphabet cards and number cardsĀ for Maddy and Owen so they can learnĀ spelling list-math words list 1
  • continue alphabet cards & games teachmama.comfor Cora, trying uppercase and mix in some lowercase

And that’s it–a little bit of learning, a lot of fun, and a teeny bit of our day! Happy WORDO! playing!

Want a few more alphabet activities? Check out:

  • backyard alphabet hunt
  • homemade alphabet book
  • leafy letter learning
  • ABC hunt
  • on the road ABC hunt
  • lowercase ABC hunt
  • build your own bingo: uppercase and lowercase match
  • ABC cards and clothespin match
  • alphabet letter splash
  • alphabingo (play with lowercase letters)
  • alphabet letter lids
  • leafy outdoor alphabet hunt
  • build your own board game
  • clothespin letter match
  • 10 fun ways to learn theĀ alphabet

 

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About the Author

Hi, I’m Patricia, an elementary teacher and reading specialist, turned homeschool mom. I also have a master's in psychology, specializing in children's issues. Read More…

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Comments

  1. Lori says

    May 26, 2011 at 9:23 pm

    What a cute idea! I think Gess and I will play this during the summer too! Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  2. trisha says

    May 27, 2011 at 8:01 am

    Hi Amy,
    How do I save in Scribd? It just comes up as another tab in my webbrowser. There is no save button and if I do “File -> Save”, it just saves the webpage (html). Can you help?
    Thanks!
    trisha

    Reply
    • amy says

      May 27, 2011 at 2:20 pm

      Trisha!
      I AM SO SORRY! I’m not sure why. I tried to move from 4shared because so many people were having trouble using the site, so now I’m really confused. Was it the same for all the documents, or only the ones that were full-screen? Thank you for letting me know; trying to use what is best for everyone, but I really hope I didn’t go from bad to worse. . . ack.

      Reply
  3. Symmetry says

    May 28, 2011 at 7:10 am

    Thanks for the post, Amy! I love this idea because it is so versatile. I’ve been looking for a new activity to play with Belle’s sight words. šŸ™‚

    Reply
    • amy says

      May 28, 2011 at 9:18 am

      You’re so welcome!! Hope it helps mix things up for Belle a little bit!

      Reply
  4. Alison says

    June 2, 2011 at 4:20 pm

    Loved playing this game in school with my primary students. I think I’ll try it at home too. Check out my blog for another review game you might like called “Swat the Fly”. Maybe you’ve already heard of it!

    http://bugandmonkeymama.blogspot.com/

    Reply
  5. Ali says

    June 12, 2011 at 10:13 pm

    Thanks this looks great. The link to early emergent words takes me to early fluency words. Can you send me the link to the early emergent word list?

    Reply
    • amy says

      June 13, 2011 at 10:19 am

      ALI! Whoops! Must have been moving too quickly, my friend! I did update the post–thank you for the head’s up!–but here’s the link to the early emergent word cards so it’s close: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/56420096?access_key=key-1ob9fw69hjm48fndif4i

      cheers!

      Reply
  6. Ann Foster says

    April 29, 2012 at 4:02 am

    What a great activity, my Year Ones and Preps will love it.
    Ann Foster

    Reply
  7. Shanleigh Cole says

    March 23, 2013 at 1:05 am

    One way to reuse the board is to laminate it and use ordorless dry erase markers to write on them. P.S I’m a Pre-school teacher and I LOVE this I’m going to use it with my class on Monday. I love that you are so involved with your kids!! It’s nice to see parents who are working so hard with their kids at home too!

    Reply
    • Teach Mama says

      March 23, 2013 at 9:11 am

      shanleigh! THANK YOU THANK YOU for your kind words–means a ton! And great idea about laminating–I’d even consider using clear contact paper for those folks who don’t have access to a laminator! Great idea!

      Reply
  8. Theresjustonemommy says

    May 2, 2015 at 10:42 pm

    Such a fun idea! Pinned!

    Reply

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Hi, I’m Patricia, an elementary teacher and reading specialist, turned homeschool mom.

After our three kids graduated high school, I went back to school to become a marriage and family therapist who has specialized in children’s issues.

I love helping families find all the fun and deep learning possible for their children.

I’m so glad you’re here on Teach Mama and I look forward to helping you on your journey!

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