How to help kids with their spelling homework

Grab some chalk and play hopscotch together. Add a twist by putting their words into the hopscotch grid.

Ask them to draw and colour in a picture, then hide their spelling words inside their picture. Get them to show it to you and see if you can find their hidden words. 

When you're having tea, see if they can write their words with their veg. What words can your child write?

Find a newspaper or magazine and help your child to highlight all the spelling words they can find. What are some interesting words you can find together?

Set them a challenge: every time someone says their spelling word, they have to do a jumping jack and spell it out loud.

Get them to spell their spelling words with their body. Some letters are harder than others!

Get them to trace their spelling words onto your back with their finger. Can you guess what they're trying to spell. Swap roles, and then trace words onto their back. Can they guess what you're spelling?

When you're playing together, ask them if they can spell out their words with their building blocks or their favourite toys.

If you have fridge magnets, get them to spell their words on the fridge. Mix up the letters and get them to spell it again. Can they spell it backwards?

In a darkened room, ask if they can write out their spelling words in the air using a torch or the light on your phone. If they're not too confident at the start, you could read them out to them first. Swap roles and get them to read the words you're spelling out for them. 

While you're getting dinner on, get out an oven tray and pour some uncooked rice on it. Ask if they can spell their spelling words in the rice. Then when you need to cook the rice, get them to pour the rice into the water. 

Throw a ball back and forth between you and say one letter each of their spelling words. You can start with the first couple of letters as they get used to it. Swap places occasionally. You can even get the whole family involved so you all learn the words together!

Sing the spelling words to the tune of a favourite song – so for example, if they need to learn to spell the word ‘lovely’,  instead of ‘Jingle Bells’ you could sing “L, O, V, E, L, Y, lovely all the way!”

Play cheerleaders together and call out the letters for their spelling words. For example, cheer up high for letters that touch up the top handwriting line (e.g. t and l), hands on hips for middle letters (e.g. a and e) and cheer down low for low letters (e.g. y and j). 

Go outside to a sandbox or even the beach and write words in the sand with them.

Keep them busy after school by getting them to write a letter to their favourite superhero, using as many of their spelling words as possible. Tell them it can be as silly as they like.

Make volcano words by adding one letter to each line:

V
VO
VOL
VOLC
VOLCA
VOLCAN
VOLCANO

Get them to write their spelling words out on to 2 cards. Do the same for other spelling words until you have a pack of cards. Play "snap" together. You can make it a bit more difficult for older children by including words that look similar. 

Ask them to write their spelling words they way they usually would. Then see if they can write them with their other hand!

Ask them to draw a picture of a great big flower. Get them to write their spelling words on each of the flower’s petals or leaves. They can draw extra flowers if they run out of room.

Kids love doing their spelling with play dough! If you don't have any, you can always make your own. This recipe from the BBC shows you how.

Don't worry if your child gets the answer wrong when you're doing spelling activities. Let them know it's not a big deal. Try to praise their effort rather than them getting answers right. That way, they'll get more confident at trying to solve things, even if they don't come up with the right answer straight away.