Read and write games
12 Writing Games To Help Kids Learn To Write And Have Fun Doing It
Writing can feel daunting to young learners — there are so many letters to memorize, sounds to recall, and words to spell! You might be wondering what the best writing games are to help your child learn to write.
HOMER has got you covered with these simple and engaging writing games! With minimal equipment required, these activities can be set up within minutes and provide unlimited fun.
Before we dive into our favorite writing games, let’s discover why writing is important in child development.
Why Writing Is Crucial To Development
From their early scribbles to drawing recognizable letters, writing is a useful form of self-expression for children and allows their ideas to flow more easily.
What’s more, the alphabetic code is reversible, so children who use sounds to determine words for writing are simultaneously advancing their ability to sound out words and read coherently. Win-win!
This is a lifelong skill that your child will use every day, so it’s important to know how to best nurture and develop these emergent literacy skills from a young age.
By playing the writing games outlined below and taking the time to practice, your young writer will be an expert in no time!
Why Games Are Important For Learning
You know that it’s important for your child to develop writing skills, but you may be wondering why you should incorporate games into their learning.
Why can’t your child just sit down with a pen and paper to practice writing?
Less Stressful Learning
Here’s the stitch: Being asked to sit down and practice writing skills can be daunting for some kids. It can also be frustrating when they come across letters or words they struggle with.
Games, on the other hand, decrease stress levels and get children excited about learning.
While playing learning games, your child will not only be practicing their writing skills, but they’ll also be more focused on completing the fun activity than on getting frustrated that they can’t write the uppercase Q, Z, or J.
When children see that learning doesn’t have to be tense or highly stressful, it can also change their perception of educational activities.
In fact, they may be more willing to participate in future educational games.
Motivation
Motivation is one of the biggest advantages of playing writing games.
Kids are more likely to pay attention to the instructions and participate when they see the activity is fun. This is much more effective for teaching writing (and other) skills than simply handing them a worksheet.
Some educational games also allow children to play in pairs or groups. Interacting with peers or family members in this way is an excellent opportunity to develop critical social skills, such as listening to others, communicating effectively, and taking turns.
Friendly Competition
Kids can be very competitive — with their friends, siblings, and sometimes even with mom and dad. Playing writing games can foster a spirit of fun, healthy competition.
If you involve multiple children in these activities, the child who wins can learn to congratulate their fellow competitors and not just brag about their accomplishment.
And the one who loses can learn to celebrate another person’s win and try harder next time.
Problem-Solving Skills
By nature, most games require participants to incorporate problem-solving skills, planning, and creativity. That’s a lot of mental work!
Playing writing — and other types of educational — games can help your child develop these essential life skills.
Now that we’re clear on why writing games are important, let’s get into the activities you can introduce to your child today.
We’ve divided these into three sections — writing games for preschoolers and kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders. So, feel free to scroll to the relevant section for your child (or children), and let the games begin!
Writing Games For Preschoolers And Kindergarteners
1) Disappearing Letters
What You’ll Need
- A chalkboard
- Chalk
- A paintbrush
- A cup of water
What To Do
Start this activity by writing a repeated letter, a word, or your child’s name on the chalkboard using your chalk.
If you’re writing a single letter, start by writing it five times in a row.
Dip the paintbrush in the cup of water and have your child trace over each of the letters, erasing them one by one.
Once your child has mastered one letter, move on to multiple letters until they’re comfortable using this activity to “write” their name and short consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words such as dog and cat.
This activity is great for working on developing your little one’s fine motor skills as well as their spelling abilities, which will aid them as they take pencil to paper!
2) Hands-On Writing
What You’ll Need
- A tray or bin
- A fun material such as sand, flour, or shaving cream — anything that can hold a shape
- A pen and piece of paper (optional)
What To Do
To start this activity, grab a tray or bin that’s deep enough to hold your chosen material.
Fill your tray and bin with sand, flour, shaving cream, or anything else that can be used to form a shape.
This is what your child will use to develop their writing skills!
Say a letter to your child (or write the letter on a piece of paper for them to copy, if needed) and have them write the letter into the sand, flour, or shaving cream with their finger.
Eventually, you can work your way up to having your child write whole words, like their name or things they love (the names of their friends and family or even their favorite foods or toys).
Don’t worry too much about what the letters look like — even scribbles are OK! Whatever your child writes to produce a letter or word is great progress.
This activity lets you make writing a fun, sensory experience! Try using different materials to keep your child engaged and to learn more about the world around them while they practice their writing skills.
You could also use a fingerpainting method for this game for some colorful fun — enjoy getting creative with this writing game!
3) Yarn Letters
What You’ll Need
- Blank sheets of paper
- Pencils
- Yarn
- Child-safe scissors
- Glue
What To Do
Grab the blank sheet of paper and help your child draw a letter of the alphabet with a pencil.
Then, hand them the yarn, scissors, and glue, and help them trace the letter by cutting and gluing the string onto its shape.
Performing this task is an effective way for your child to develop their fine motor skills, a key component of writing. In addition, this hands-on activity allows children to continue learning their letters.
Writing Games For First Graders
4) Roll The Dice
What You’ll Need
- A piece of paper
- A pen or pencil
- A dice
What To Do
This writing game is all about creating a fun story with your child using dice to determine how many words you get to add each turn!
Start by having your child choose a main character, a setting, and a problem. For example, your character might be a cat, your setting might be a garden, and the problem might be that the cat needs to find some food.
Write the first sentence of your story based on the character, setting, and problem you’ve chosen with your child.
Using our example above, the first sentence might be, “Once, there was a cat in a garden who couldn’t find any food.”
After you write the first sentence, have your child roll the dice. Whatever number the dice lands on is the number of words they’ll add to the story — not one word more or less!
You can assist your child by sounding out tricky words and helping them write if needed. Once they’ve added their words, it’s your turn to roll the dice and write your next round of words based on the dice number.
Take up to five turns each before finishing your story together by choosing an ending. Then read your story aloud to see how it all flows!
5) Speech Bubbles
What You’ll Need
- A piece of paper for drawing or a printed cartoon
- A pen or pencil
What To Do
For this activity, start by having your child draw a picture with a character or two. You could draw this scene together or even print off some characters from the internet to color and decorate together.
Once you’ve finished drawing and decorating your characters, it’s time for each of you to draw and fill in a speech bubble to create thoughts for your character (or a conversation if you drew more than one character).
For example, if your character is a dog, maybe he’s standing by an empty bowl. What might a hungry dog say? Some options could be, “Where’s my food?” or “I hope they bring pizza!”.
Let your child’s imagination run wild with possibilities for filling in the speech bubbles and enjoy this writing activity together by writing down the silly suggestions, too!
Speech bubbles are one of the most fun options for writing games as they’re quick, easy, and short for young writers.
This may help your child feel less intimidated as they explore more words to add to their vocabulary and practice forming their letters correctly.
6) Birthday Cards
What You’ll Need
- Colored pens or crayons
- Pencils
- Blank birthday card
What To Do
Birthdays are a day most people look forward to.
For kids, this day usually means lots of gifts, games, a birthday cake, and, of course, a birthday card.
Help your child create a unique birthday card for their friend, neighbor, cousin, sibling, mom, or dad — whoever they want! Once they select the recipient, get the supplies you need and help them write a sweet message for their loved one.
This is a wonderful activity for your child to practice putting their thoughts on paper. They can also add flowers, hearts, and anything else that will help to make the card extra special.
Note: This activity can be used for any occasion, not just birthdays. Is it the holidays? Has the family been invited to a graduation party? Do you have a family member who’s not feeling well?
All of these are excellent opportunities to create a special card for a loved one.
7) Map Out The Story
What You’ll Need
- A blank sheet of paper
- Colored pencils (or crayons)
What To Do
The aim of this writing game is simple: create a setting for a story.
Children love when a storybook they’re reading includes some pictures and a map to bring the story to life. With this activity, they get to create their own!
All your child needs to do is draw a map of the story setting of their choosing, labeling the different areas. This can be a story they’ve read or one that’s just popped into their head. It really doesn’t matter as long as they’re excited about it.
To help them get started, you can ask prompting questions, like:
- Does your story take place on land or in water?
- If it’s on land, what and who lives on that land?
- If it takes place in water, what types of interesting creatures are there?
- What’s the weather like?
- How many characters are there?
- Where do these characters live?
- What do the characters do?
- Are there any landmarks?
Once your child is clear about the world of the story, it’s time to draw and create it. Now you can also help your child write a story that takes place in their invented world.
For this activity, we’re not expecting incredible artwork or penmanship. Instead, the main focus is to have kids practice gripping pens or pencils and writing.
Writing Games For Second Graders
8) Grocery List Writing
What You’ll Need
- A piece of paper for making your list
- A pen or pencil
What To Do
Make the task of writing your grocery list into a game!
You can do this as part of a make-believe or role-playing game with your child, or you can create a real grocery list together before the shopping gets done.
Try planning out some meals for the week ahead, and then make a list with your child for each of the ingredients needed. Explain that writing a list helps us to remember all the things we need to buy, and discuss what items you might need to purchase.
Keep it simple and help your child by sounding out words as they write. Once the list is written, your child can enjoy checking off each item one by one after it’s been put in the cart!
9) Household I-Spy
What You’ll Need
- Two pieces of paper, one for you and one for your child
- Two pens or pencils, one for you and one for your child
- A timer or timer app
What To Do
One of our favorite writing games is this version of I-Spy with a twist!
Grab your paper and write each letter of the alphabet down the left-hand side.
Once you and your child have both written the alphabet on your paper, set your timer for 10 minutes.
You’ll then race from room to room to find and write down as many objects as possible that begin with each letter of the alphabet. Write each object next to its corresponding letter and fill in as many as you can within the time limit.
You could also set a handicap for this writing game to raise the stakes! For example, if your child’s time limit is 10 minutes, cut yours in half so that you have to find as many objects as possible in five minutes.
10) Accordion Storytelling
What You’ll Need
- A sheet of paper
- Pen
- Ruler
What To Do
The first player will start the story at the top of your clean sheet of paper by writing two sentences on separate lines. They can write about any topic they want.
When they’re done writing, they’ll need to fold the paper over the first sentence and pass the paper on to the next player.
This means that the first sentence won’t be seen. The next writer will only be able to see the second sentence on the page.
This player will need to write their own two sentences based on the line they can see. After that, they’ll fold down the first line of what they wrote and pass it on to the next player, too. The paper will continue to be passed around and folded like an accordion.
The round ends once all the paper has been folded up, and there’s no space left to write. Once you’ve reached this stage, open it up and read the story aloud together.
What interesting story did you come up with? Get ready to have a good laugh!
Note: You can take turns reading one sentence each, or you can nominate one person to read the whole story to everyone.
This is a great game to play with the whole family or even just two people, although it is the most fun with at least three people. And it will encourage creativity and writing skills.
11) Pen Pal Writing
What You’ll Need
- Paper
- Pens or pencils
- A pen pal
What To Do
Writing letters to pen pals is very traditional.
In a nutshell, it involves two people in a long-distance friendship who communicate by writing letters to each other.
Now, with the advancement of technology, very few people still do this via snail mail. But it can be a great way to encourage children to write.
Who can your child write to? They can choose a friend who’s moved schools, a cousin who lives in another state, or their grandparents. It can be anyone they’d like to send a message to!
This is a fun way to help children learn about mailing letters and how the postal system works. They also get to create memories and can keep the letters their pen pal writes to reflect on for years to come!
12) Rewrite The Ending
What You’ll Need
- Paper
- Pen or pencils
- Storybook
What To Do
Children will need to exercise their imaginations to play this game.
To get started, read a book aloud to your child. (This can be an old favorite or a new story.) Once you’ve finished reading, encourage them to create their own version of the ending.
It can be challenging for children to imagine their favorite stories in a different way, so you might need to help your child think outside the box:
- What if the frog never turned into a prince but into a big elephant instead?
- What if the three little pigs learned karate and decided to fight the wolf?
- Could the little mermaid have a twin sister she just discovered?
This activity lets your child exercise their imagination while also practicing their writing skills. If this is done with multiple children, it will be fun to see what exciting versions of the script each child comes up with.
Enjoy Learning To Write With HOMER!
We hope you’ve found some new favorite writing games from our activities in this guide!
From creating sensory play activities with sand and fingerpaints to writing a grocery list together, there are so many ways to get creative with your child and make writing a fun shared activity.
For even more writing fun, unbox a learning adventure with our Explore Letters Kit.
Watch your child build their literacy skills, using their imagination to lead them through a variety of writing and spelling activities!
Author
Reading Games | PBS KIDS
Reading Games | PBS KIDS Reading GamesMore Games
Super Why!
Alpha Pig's Paint By Letter
alpha pig letter and painting game
Play Now!Sesame Street
Abby's Sandbox Search
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
Help Abby find the objects hidden in the sand!
Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum
Xavier Story Creator
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
Create stories your own way!
Peg + Cat
The Big Dog Problem
Mathematics,Computational Thinking
Read a storybook with Peg and Cat!
Peg + Cat
The Election Problem
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Mathematics,Social Studies,Computational Thinking
The chickens vote for someone to watch them while the farmer is away!
Sesame Street
Storybook Builder
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Social & Emotional Growth
Create stories with Elmo, Abby Cadabby, and Cookie Monster!
Sesame Street
Letter Dance Party
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
In this game, your child can practice letter recognition and dance with Big Bird and Snuffy.
Plum Landing
Can You Dig It?
Science
Dig underground to find food, but watch out for predators!
Martha Speaks
A Tale of Two Soup Cans
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
A Martha True Story about two soup cans and what happens when we are done with them.
Martha Speaks
Getting To The Game
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
A Martha True Story about getting to the game!
Martha Speaks
Operation Ice Cream
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
A Martha True Story about all the ways to get the message out about an ice cream party!
Martha Speaks
How to be an Inventor
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
A Martha True Story about how to be an inventor!
Martha Speaks
Super Inventions
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One of the Martha True Stories texts.
Martha Speaks
How Do You Measure Up?
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Read about measurement with Martha!
Martha Speaks
Planning an Elephant's Party
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Mathematics
A Martha True Story about planning an elephant's birthday party!
WordGirl
Comic Book
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
WordGirl Interactive Comic Book Activity
WordGirl
Storybook Adventure
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
html5 choose your own adventure book
Arthur
Arthur's Park
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Science,Social & Emotional Growth,Executive Function Skills
Help Arthur build a new park and beautify Elwood City!
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Adventure Stories
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
Create stories with Clifford!
Curious George
Hide and Seek
Mathematics
Look and find numbers game
Molly of Denali
Explore With Molly
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Social Studies,The Arts
Explore Molly's town, play games, and help her neighbors pick blueberries, find agate stones, and make syrup!
Molly of Denali
Fish Camp
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Social Studies
Fish for salmon with fishing rods and wheels to feed Molly's friends and sled dogs!
Molly of Denali
Beading Art
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Social Studies,The Arts
Create beaded designs with Molly using step-by-step instructions or create your own designs.
Molly of Denali
Denali Trading Post
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Mathematics,Social Studies,Executive Function Skills
Help run the Trading Post with Molly and Suki! Fill customer orders and restock shelves.
Molly of Denali
Sled Dog Dash
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Social Studies
Go on a sledding adventure! Help Molly care for the sled dogs and make deliveries.
Molly of Denali
Veggiezilla!
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Science,Mathematics
Grow giant vegetables with Molly and Trini for the Alaska State Fair!
Molly of Denali
Alaskan Adventure
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Science
Explore the Alaskan wilderness with Molly, her mom, and Nina. Take photos of amazing animals and record what you find in your notebook.
Super Why!
Wonder Red’s Rhyme Racer
Roller skate and rhyme with Wonder Red.
Super Why!
Super Why! Saves the Day
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
Use your spelling knowledge to help Super Why finish the story!
Super Why!
Storybook Creator
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
super why reading storybook creator
Super Why!
Princess Presto's Spectacular Spelling Play
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA)
Help Princess Presto put on a spelling play filled with letters!
Molly of Denali
Molly’s Winter Kitchen
Literacy-English Language Arts (ELA),Science,Social Studies
Help Molly and her mom prepare traditional foods to last all winter!
Educational games - Learn to read
- Home
- Toddlers aged 2 to 4
- Learning to read
Educational games "Learning to read" are designed for kids who are just learning to read.
Here we will upload games that will help children learn words and syllables, learn how to make words from syllables, find hidden letters and much more. All games are full of bright pictures that will make learning fun and interesting even for very young students...
And if you want to download various teaching materials for reading for printing on a computer, then the section "Teaching reading for preschoolers and not only ..." will help you. In this section you will find both the Russian alphabet for printing and unique Reading Tasks for syllables, and original Stories with pictures instead of words, and fun colorful tasks Compose a word from letters and much more interesting ...
This game will teach the child the phonetic transformation of one word into another. The game will help the kid understand that just one letter in a word can completely change the meaning of the word. Tasks are divided into three types: insert the desired letters, remove one letter, change the letter.
..
In this educational online game we learn to read by collecting words from given syllables. The game is designed for children who are just learning to read. In the game, you need to collect the indicated words on the topic "Vegetables" from the proposed syllables. To do this, you just need to drag the syllables to empty cells with the mouse ...
An educational game in which we learn to read , collecting words from syllables on the theme "Nature" is intended for children who are just taking their first steps in reading. Learn to read better by syllables. The child remembers the sound of each syllable, and then makes words out of them ...
Games - Learn to read with "Funny Alphabet". This game is for kids who already know the alphabet. The game is designed to consolidate the child's learned letters and search for these letters in words. The game consists of 29 levels, each of which represents one of the letters of the Russian alphabet...
When children cannot read yet, the first thing they are taught is, of course, the alphabet.
An educational game with the search for letters will help with this. This game for kids from 2 to 4 years old "Find the hidden letters" is an activity for the smallest kids who are just starting to get acquainted with the alphabet...
How to learn to read and write: 3 educational games
Child development
How to learn to read and write: 3 educational games
December 8, 2017 10 153 views
Olesya Akhmedzhanova
When a child is learning letters and learning to write, the best way to consolidate knowledge is through play. We chose three “developers” from the book “Learning by Playing”: they will help you master the alphabet and prepositions, and also build letters on your own.
nine0011
Alphabet shopping
By the way, you can also have an exciting writing lesson at the supermarket. The child will be delighted. When you go to the store, take a tablet with a clip, paper and a pen with you - and the time will fly by. The task of the participants is to find one product for each letter of the alphabet on the shelves and write down their names on the sheet.
Materials
- Clipboard and paper (or pad)
- Pencil
Illustration from Learning by Playing
Preparation
1. Attach a piece of paper to the tablet.
2. On the left side of the sheet, write the letters in a column in alphabetical order.
How to play
1. Take a tablet with a sheet of paper attached to it with you to the store. If there are several children, you can give them one common tablet or each one of their own. When a child sees a product, he must name it and say the first sound of its name.
The next step is to find the corresponding letter on the sheet and write down the name of the product next to it. For example: A - orange, B - banana, C - vermicelli. Such a funny phonetic game will be interesting and useful for a child. nine0011
2. Each letter can only be used once. Let the participants try to find products for all the letters before you get to the checkout!
The smallest participants pronounce the name of the product and its first sound, and an adult writes down the word.
Theater of Prepositions
Children need to understand what prepositions are so as not to get confused when they meet them in a text. Take a book with fascinating stories and while reading, draw the children's attention to prepositions. And then invite the little listeners to have some fun and show their acting talents. They will need to read the prepositions on the cards and try to depict them without words so that other participants can guess them. nine0011
Materials
- 7.
5 x 13 cm cards - Scissors
- Pencil
- Box
- Toys
The cat and the bird show prepositions. Resource
Preparation
1. Cut the cards in half.
2. Write one preposition on each card: “in”, “on”, “next to”, “under”, “above”, “about”, “between”, “for”, “before”, “ outside", "inside".
How to play
1. Lay the cards face down.
2. One of the players chooses a card, reads a preposition to himself and tries to "depict" it, using toys and a box as props.
3. Other children try to guess the pretext by describing the scene being played with a sentence.
4. The one who guessed the preposition chooses the next card.
5. The game continues until the cards run out.
Let toys be the actors in your “pretext theater” and a dollhouse be the stage. nine0019
Building a letter
What are letters made of? From sticks, circles and various arcs! This game is perfect for little engineers who love to build.
Make a set of parts, invite the child to choose three or four of them and see which letter he can put together. For example, the letter Yu: it consists of two arcs and two sticks of different lengths. Let's collect the rest!
Materials
- Carton or cereal boxes
- Line
- Scissors
- Paper
- Marker
Illustration from the book "Learning by playing"
Preparation
1. Cut out four pieces of each type from cardboard:
a) rectangles 1.5 × 7.5 cm;
b) rectangles 1.5 × 15 cm;
c) rectangles 1.5 × 5 cm;
d) circles with a diameter of 15 cm;
e) bagels, 7.5 cm in diameter;
f) halves of oval "donuts" 15 cm in diameter.
2. Write the alphabet (uppercase or lowercase) on a piece of paper to use as a reference during the game.
How to play
1. Ask your child to add any letter of the alphabet.
