Fun Word Games to Play With Your Kids

Kids are knowledge sponges during their formative years. Anything you tell them will generally affect them in the long run, and the experiences they have will usually go a long way in helping them establish fundamental knowledge that helps them later in life. However, making education fun for kids is usually the biggest challenge to overcome.

Most kids love to learn, but only when it’s disguised in a game form. So to help you out, we’ve put together a little selection of fun word games that you can play with your kids. Many of these suggestions are great choices even if you don’t have pen and paper ready, meaning you can play them in the car, while walking around or virtually anywhere.

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I Spy

I Spy is perhaps one of the most classic word games you can play with your kids. It’s more fun when you’re outdoors because there are more things to “spy” on, hence why it’s so popular to play in cars. Simply spot something and tell your kids what letter it begins with, then watch as they look around and try to guess what you’re spying on. If they’re having trouble, you can always give them a hint such as its colour or its general location.

Word Scramble

There are lots of fun scramble and jumble word games that can give your kids a real challenge. Simply pick a bunch of random consonants and vowels and see how many words you and your kids can figure out from the jumble! You can even use online tools like Jumble to confirm all of the words you can make from the random assortment of letters you’ve picked. If you want to make it competitive, why not take turns to see how many words you can make? This is a great game for groups of kids as well.

One Letter Change

This is a great game for children that are still learning shorter words. You simply start with a four or five-letter word, such as “tall”, and then change one letter at a time to make a new word. For instance, a chain could look like tall, tail, sail, mail, mall, male, sale and so on. You can make it a competitive game, writing down all the variations until someone gives up or says something that has already been mentioned. Alternatively, you can time your child to see how many unique words they can think of in just 60 seconds.

Word games are fantastic because they help improve your child’s vocabulary while stimulating their minds. If you have access to a tablet or smartphone then there are lots of educational apps that you can pick as well. However, we tried to limit our selection to word games that can be played with just a pen and paper, or even nothing at all! We hope that these ideas have inspired you to make up some word games and play them with your kids.