3 Fun Reading Games for Children

Reading games that you can play with your child at home are a great way for them to learn essential literacy skills while having fun. Try playing these 3 fun reading games with your child at home:

Find a Word

Designate a word to your child that they don’t already know and ask them to find that word in a book, newspaper, magazine or other text. Once your child has found their designated word, ask them to choose a word that they already know and to find two examples of this word used in different ways. For example, the word ‘face’ can be used as both a noun; ‘he had a smile on his face’ or as a verb; ‘he had to face the school principal.’

Make sure your child writes down these words and their definitions in a notebook, including the sentences they were found in so that they remember the different ways the same word can be used.

Word Groups

Write down a word on a piece of paper and ask your child to write down as many related words as they can. For example, for the word ‘fruit’, your child can list ‘apple, orange, watermelon’ etc, or for the word ‘exercise’, they can list ‘running, swimming’ etc. Once your child has finished listing related words, ask them to write each word in a sentence. Writing a list of related words with a common theme makes it easier for your child to commit these words to their memory.

Complete the Word

This activity helps develop your child’s listening, spelling and vocabulary skills. All you need to do is create a list of compound words, that is, words that are made up of two smaller words. For example, ‘everything’, ‘meantime’, ‘butterflies’, etc. Read this list out to your child, but only read the first part of each word, e.g. ‘every’ in ‘everything’, and ask your child to work out the remainder of the word. Some compound words may start with a word that can be joined with several words, e.g ‘everything’ everyone’, ‘everywhere’, so if your child is ready for a challenge you can ask them to list all the possible variations.