There are tons of fun and interesting ways kids can develop literacy skills at home. My six-year-old son was finding it difficult to pronounce a word; I watched him as he struggled and was twisting his tongue, then I told him, let’s play a game of pronunciations by clapping out every syllable that makes up this whole word. Then we broke down the words into syllables and clapped our hands as we pronounced each one. In no time, he mastered the word and not just learned how to pronounce it correctly but also learned to spell it. Literacy skill development is a vital part of your child’s overall development, and one way to enhance this is by engaging them with fun literacy games and activities. This helps kids learn better and comprehend seamlessly.

Here are seven easy literacy games kids can play at home. 

Find the Word

Find the word is an elementary game your child can play at home. For this game, I ask the kids to think of a word that starts with an alphabet letter. For example, I’ll say, “Find a word that starts with /b/ sound.” Then they begin guessing words. Usually, it takes just one or two tries to come up with the word, and gradually their literacy skill becomes very sharpened.

What Comes After

This game is more of a question game; I say a letter of the alphabet and ask my kids what letter comes next. It’s such a simple game, but it helps my kid know the order of the alphabet. You can start from any of the alphabets; for instance, you say, E, F, G, H and then ask what comes next?. 

I Spy

Have you ever tried playing the “I Spy” game with your kids? It is an excellent literacy game to keep kids engaged and learning, and here is how to go about it.  Simply pick an object and describe it using the first letter of the object or the colour or the function they perform. For example, “I spy with my little eye, something that reflects an image of you, Or, “I spy, with my little eye, something green.” You can start by working your way through the alphabet or the colours, or the use of any object you can see around.

Take turns reading

Taking turns and alternating reading pages or paragraphs with your child can help keep them engaged in the storyline. In addition to assisting them to expand their vocabulary also teaches them how to pronounce new words and learn to read more. Use your finger to guide your child’s eyes from left to right across the page as you read and point out specific words or phrases.

Syllable Count

Another literacy game that kids can play at home is counting syllables or the parts of a word. We shout out a word and then clap and count the syllables. Take a look around the room and find objects and find the syllables. Here’s an example you can try with your kids, call out a word and ask your kids to clap out the syllables. It helps kids learn their syllables and builds their literacy skills.

Rhyming Sentence

Rhyming sentences is a good game your child can engage in to build their literacy skills. There are thousands of rhyming words in the English language that could help sentence structure. It also enables them to be able to read because it teaches children about the language. Rhyming helps children learn about word families such as let, met, pet, wet, and get. If you want to play rhyming sentence games, this is how we go about it; I will start the sentence and have my kids fill in the blank. Here is an example:

Me: “The cat sat on a __.”

Kids: “Mat!”

Me: “The frog had a _.”

Kids: “Dog!

Me: “The sky is _.”

Kids: “high”

Alphabet pillow jumping

If your kids need to burn off some energy, this letter activity will be just perfect. Use a stack of paper plates, and write one giant letter on each one. Then use packing tape to secure each plate to a pillow and spread them around the room. Have the kids start on one side of the room and jump to the other without touching the floor. As they jump to each new pillow, have them say the letter or letter sound, you could give them the task of also jumping on letters to create a word. This is a very engaging game, and kids love it.

It should not be so hard to learn anything, right? What we learn while having fun we hardly forget and let me also add that most of my most memorable lessons at school were times when my teachers went beyond the everyday style to be creative with their teaching. The major one I can’t forget was how we created a song for the multiplication table, and till today, it has never stopped ringing in my head. If you want to introduce youngsters to letters and improve their literacy skills, try out these fun learning activities.

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