If your child is now in Kindergarten and getting weekly spelling tests, these 8 tips for prepping Kindergarteners for spelling tests will help.
If you’re like me, you were probably shocked that this day came so quickly and were very unprepared for helping them to prep for these tests.
After week 1, I realized I had to come up with creative ways to ensure that the prep work was not too overwhelming for my daughter, and below are the eight tips for prepping Kindergarteners for spelling that I found worked well.
Spelling test top tips
- Prep: First and foremost, start prepping as soon as the words are sent out. This gives you sufficient time to focus on one word per day with your child.
- Good ole flashcards: I start off using flashcards as this helps with word recognition. Once she has mastered recognizing the words, then we move onto sounding it out and spelling them.
- Make it fun: You know your child and what is likely to work with them. In most cases, it doesn’t take much to make things fun for them. I found that simply using coloured markers when practicing to write the words helped to keep my daughter interested and excited.
- Take turns playing teacher: Kindergarteners love to feel like they are in control. So while for the majority of the prep work, you (the parent) are their “teacher”, allow your child to play the role of teacher as well. My daughter loves to be the teacher and have me spell the words as well as write them, which of course is reinforcing the words for her as well. While I’m playing the role of the student, I would also pretend like I don’t remember how to spell the words and have my daughter assist me with sounding it out. By her doing this, she is actually practicing without even realizing it.
- Utilize letter tiles: These are used by the teachers at my daughter’s school and so I have incorporated using them at home as well. I usually give her the letters (jumbled up of course) for the word along with three extra letters and have her find the letters and place them in the correct order.
- Utilize story books: Get a few of their favourite books and have them search for words they know and point them out to you. You can also point to the word(s) and ask them what it is. This is also great for reinforcement and ensuring that they can identify the words in different contexts. It also helps to build their confidence to a point where they may be out in public and will actually start pointing out words on a sign or poster for example.
- Make good use of YouTube: Because which kid doesn’t love watching videos on YouTube! One day I just decided to type “spell girl” in the search box and played the video for my daughter. It was a very catchy song “G-I-R-L that spells girl. G-I-R-L.” The song was repetitive and definitely made it stick in her head.
- Encourage them! Again, you know your child best and will know the best way to keep them encouraged and motivated. This could be simply praising them by saying “Great job, excellent work, I’m so proud of you, keep it up!” Or it might mean getting some reward stickers or a lollipop. You would be surprised how much it means to them to have you recognize their hard work and efforts.
Learning on the job
Please note that I am not a teacher of any sort, I am just a mom who found these 8 tips for prepping Kindergarteners for spelling tests very useful as they have certainly helped my daughter to ace her tests.
At the end of the day, the key is to make it not feel like “schoolwork” but instead try to make the experience of spelling as fun as possible.