Fun Literacy Games for Kids During School Holidays

Written by Lucy Lewis

Now that school holidays are in full swing, Leap Street has curated a list of the best board games to keep your children engaged and learning. These games offer multiple ways to play, ensuring that kids have the chance to expand their knowledge while having fun.

The Importance of Family Board Games:

Research indicates that family social interactions have a profound impact on children's cognitive, social, and emotional development, strengthening family bonds along the way. One fantastic way to spend quality time with your child is by playing board games, which come with a host of benefits including improved social skills, enhanced cognitive function, reduced screen time, and the fostering of strong parent-child relationships. In this post, we'll introduce you to some of our favourite literacy games for kids.

1. Little Learners Love Literacy Bingo Games:

Little Learners Love Literacy Bingo Games (Stages 1–2) provide children with ample opportunities to practice reading consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words using the phonemes and graphemes they've learned in Stages 1 and 2 of the Little Learners Love Literacy® sequence. The game also reinforces Heart words like "the," "I," and "my." Playing this game encourages children to recognize words automatically, all of which are closely linked to the letters and sounds we focus on in Leap Street classes.

2. Orchard Toys: Alphabet Lotto

Make learning the alphabet's letters and sounds an enjoyable experience with this game. It offers four different play styles, ranging from matching pictures to matching letters, catering to children's evolving abilities as they progress from simple picture matching to more complex letter-to-letter matching that requires thinking about initial sounds.

3. Orchard Toys: Speed Spelling

This game promotes letter recognition and spelling skills in an interactive and entertaining manner. Set the timer, and the first player must spell or match as many words as possible using picture cards. If the timer runs out, the word passes to the next player. The winner is the player with the most words at the game's conclusion. Younger children can play without the timer to concentrate on developing their letter recognition skills.

4. Orchard Toys: Match and Spell

This game offers two modes of play, allowing players to advance as they master the fundamentals. In the first version, players must match letter cards to the letters shown on their board to construct words, making it an ideal introduction to letter shapes and sounds. As children become more proficient in letter sounds, they progress to reading the words aloud. In the more challenging version, players use the blank side of their boards and letter cards to build words based on a given picture, ensuring the correct order is maintained.

5. Blah! Blah! Blah!

This hilarious card game is a highly effective tool for learning phonics for children aged four and up. Developed with teachers and phonics experts to align with curriculum standards, it covers over 40 sound-letter correspondences. Similar to UNO, it's easy for both children and adults to play.

6. My First Bananagrams

"My First BANANAGRAMS" features lowercase letters, fostering a love for word games and aligning perfectly with reading curriculums. It also includes digraph (two letters representing one sound) word-building tiles, providing the first step toward more advanced word creation.

 7. Junior Scrabble

In this lowercase version of Scrabble, kids have two levels of play to choose from. The first level includes pictures as clues for potential word suggestions, while the second level is structured like the adult version, requiring players to create their own words. Junior Scrabble not only enhances spelling skills but also enriches vocabulary.

These engaging literacy games offer the perfect blend of education and entertainment, making them an excellent choice for enhancing your child's learning experience during the school holidays. Whether your goal is to improve their reading skills or simply have a blast together as a family, these games are sure to provide hours of fun and learning.

If you would like to learn more about how Leap Street can help your child with their reading please contact us or click here to view our programs.