Play interesting word games

Word games build upon your child’s literacy skills and help in boosting their vocabulary. Your child will find it easier to understand the world around them, the more they comprehend what words mean. It’s also an entertaining and fun way to spend time with your kids during the weekends while teaching them how amazing word games can be.

Video: 7 Interesting and Fun Word Games for Kids

Benefits of Playing Word Games for Children

Wondering what word games do for your kids? Here are the benefits:

• Improves their working memory
• Boosts vocabulary and comprehension
• Develops a love for learning and reading
• Hones their problem-solving skills and creativity
• Works on their imagination and long-term memory
• A fun past time for entire families and competitive children

10 Cool Word Games for Your Kids

If you’re looking for the coolest word games for your kids, you’ve come to the right place. Enjoy browsing through our list and make sure you have a blast.

1. Hangman

Hangman is a fun game played between two players. It’s a word-guessing game where a stick-man is hung unless a player guesses the word right.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 6 to 8

No. of Players Can Play: 2 players

How to Play

You need two players for this game. Get a sheet of paper and draw a gallow. Let’s say you’re player 1 who is the puzzle giver. Think of a word and draw dashes to represent it. Proper nouns and slang words are not allowed. Let Player 2 guess each letter of that new word. Everytime they guess each letter wrong, you draw the arms, legs, and head of the stickman – bodypart by bodypart. When the stickman is complete, Player 2 loses – unless they guess the letters right and save him.

2. Word Rhyming

This is a fun game that can be played by toddlers and kids. It involves saying words that rhyme and is an easy way to build vocabulary.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 3 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 2 to 4 players

How to Play

You start the game with a word and player 2 has to say words that rhyme with the same name. For example, if you say cat, they should say hat, mat, bat, etc. Player 2 keeps going until they run out of words and then you proceed to the next player.

3. Unscramble My Words

Unscramble My Words lets your child put on their thinking cap and put their problem-solving skills to the test.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 5 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 2 to 3 players

How to Play

You think of a word and write down each letter on paper. Except there’s a twist – your scramble the ordering of the letters and your kids will have to unscramble it and get the word right.

4. I Spy

I Spy is one of the best word games for kindergarten as it’s fun, simple, and requires nothing but your imagination and creativity.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 3 to 8

No. of Players Can Play: 2 players

How to Play

Player 1 has to say the sentence – “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with E____” and Player 2 has to guess the missing word from the given first letter.

5. The Story Game

This is a great game that encourages building new worlds with words. We’ll tell you how it works so get your creativity pumping.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 5 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 3 or more players

How to Play

You start a sentence and player 2 has to continue the story.

For example, Jack went to the Farmer’s market. Player 2: And a fire brigade appeared out of nowhere. Player 3: Then a wild dog jumped across the tree.

You get the idea. The ideas are wacky and the way stories pan out is hilarious.

6. Words Within a Word

Words within a word has been hailed by parents as one of the top word-building games out there for kids. It really teaches little ones how to spell while building up their vocabulary as well.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 4 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 2 to 3 players or more

How to Play

Think of a really long word. For example – COMPUTER. Your kid will have to coin a list of words starting with every letter of your given word (cot, mike, ox, tan etc), except they must be shorter than your word’s length.

7. I’m Going on a Picnic

I’m Going on a Picnic is a word game that challenges your child’s ability to recall while testing the limits of their vocabulary. It’s truly fun and unique.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 5 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 2  to 3 players

How to Play

The first person begins with I’m going on a picnic and I will bring a candy bar. The second person adds on to the sentence by saying – I’m going on a picnic and I will bring a candy bar and sandwiches. The sentence gets expanded this way turn by turn until the final player is unable to recall the list of items added to it.

8. Scategories

Scategories is a cool word game designed for older kids. It challenges their vocabulary and really flexes their creative muscles.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 7 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 2 to 4 players

How to Play

Take some paper and a pencil and write down 15 categories such as – actor, movies, country, food item etc. Player 1 will start by writing a bunch of random letters on paper. Player 2  will close his eyes and use the pencil to point to a random letter out of those. The remaining players need to guess as many words as they can using that letter for each of the 15 categories.

9. Crosswords

Crosswords is a game that has black and white squares. It has words written based on clues provided inside the squares until the white ones are completely filled up.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 6 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 1 player

How to Play 

The instructions on how to play crosswords will be at the bottom of the game. Crosswords are usually found on newspaper pamphlets and at the back of magazines and are excellent brainteasers for kids.

10. Word Quest

Word Quest is a fun word game that involves searching for words using individual letters. It’s also one of the best word puzzle games for kids with an added twist.

Suitable Age Group: For ages 5 and up

No. of Players Can Play: 2 to 5 players

How to Play

Draw a 10 X 10 grid and divide it into boxes on a sheet of paper. On the bottom and side of the page outside the grid, fill up various words until you run out of space. Write down random letters in each of the boxes and ask your kids to fill them up using the words lying on the bottom/side of the page.

If you’re looking for fun word games for kids, these are guaranteed to stretch their creative muscles. They will definitely have a blast working on these and it’ll hone their literacy skills. By the time they enter preschool or junior high, they’ll be talking like a pro in no time.

Also Read: 

Memory Enhancing Games for Kids
Innovative and Fun Brain Games for Children
Adaptive Listening Activities, Games and Exercises for Kids

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Of course they are! While the concept of word games might sound kind of dull, take a second to think about all the kinds of great word games that you played growing up. Games like Word Search and Hangman are absolute classics that almost everyone has played and loved! 

There are plenty of riffs on word games on our Word Games Playlist! Pretty much all of our playlists on Coolmath Games have fun spins on the ordinary genre, and the Word Games Playlist is no exception. Several titles are more like regular games that happen to have words as a part of them. As mentioned before, the game Misspelled is a game where you use magic to get through the levels. By spelling words correctly, you will be rewarded with abilities like extra platforms and more jumps. A few other games like this include Candy Word and Word Worm, both of which make spelling a whole lot more fun than you would think possible.

Maybe best of all, word games will improve your spelling without it feeling like school. Getting to learn while having fun can often be difficult, but word games are a great way to learn in an exciting way. Who knows, maybe playing something like Grabble or Word Detector will help you get a little bit better of a grade in your next spelling test without even feeling like you were studying. 

The acquisition of new vocabulary is essential in terms of overall language advancement. However, there is always a need to review active words from time to time in order to use them fluently in speech. Here, we will present a couple of great vocabulary revision games which will perk up every classroom. Through these games the learners will feel how fun, entertaining and effective the learning process can be.

1. Charades

Charades is a fun and cool revision game. Students need to practice their acting skills to explain the words. This game is extremely easy to organize with minimal advance preparation. The only thing to be ready for is to keep a collection of vocabulary cards for the words you have studied.

The class is divided into two teams. Each team member takes turns acting out one of the words from the vocabulary set and explains it by acting out the word. If his or her own team can’t guess the word, the opposite team gets the chance to guess it. Each right answer equals one point.

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2. Pictionary

Pictionary is also an  entertaining game to play for vocabulary review. The rules are similar to those of charades except that instead of acting out the word, it is drawn on the board.

3. Bingo

Bingo can serve as a good revision game. From my experience, most of the groups/students like playing bingo because it gives them the chance to  reflect on the words they have digested.

Students are given a blank bingo board and are asked to put the review words into the squares randomly. The teacher puts the active words in a hat or a box, takes them out one by one and defines them. If the student has a word corresponding to the definition, he crosses it out on his bingo board. When someone gets five squares in a row, they should shout, “Bingo!”

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4. A memory style

A memory style card game can be another effective way for reviewing vocabulary. It requires some preparation before the game starts. For each word to be reviewed, one card should have the target vocabulary word and another card should have the definition of the word. You also need to have a big playing grid where you put the words and their definitions face down.

Each person turns over two cards each turn trying to find a match. If the cards do not match, he turns them over again and the next person tries to find a match. If he succeeds, he keeps the cards and gets an additional turn. The player with the highest number of cards at the end of the game wins.

The game can be modified even further. If you have accumulated enough synonyms or antonyms to the target vocabulary, you can practice matching target words to their antonyms or synonyms.

5. Categories

Categories is another awesome revision game which will make students energized and empowered. What they need for the game is to draw 4-6 columns on their paper and write a category at the top of each column. Categories fit the topics covered during the course. For example, if you have covered the business topics of Marketing, Work and Leisure, Ethics, Human Resources, Travel, you write these topics as categories.

You time the students and ask them to write as many words as possible under each category. As a further modification, choose a random letter and write it on the board. Give students enough time to write down a word for each category that starts with that letter.

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6. Letter scramble

Letter scramble will make students really competitive and super fast. What you need is to take a list of words that your students have recently learned and write a scrambled version of each on the board. Students need to unscramble the words on their paper. The first one to finish deciphering all the words wins.

7. Stop the bus

Stop the bus is a cool game my students adore.  I usually divide the class into 2-3 teams. One student from each team. This student sits on a chair facing his peers. Then from behind the student in the hot seat, show the other students a word from the lesson. The other students must try to describe what the word is without saying the actual word. And the student in the hot seat must guess.

The student who guesses the word shouts out “stop the bus” and checks the word with the teacher. If correct, the team gets a point. If wrong, other teams have the chance to guess the word by writing their versions on a piece of paper and passing the papers to the teacher.

8. Puzzles

Puzzles  is another cool and easy tool to review the material in an effective way. What I like about this way of vocabulary revision is that students can work in pairs or groups while trying to find words matching the definition in the crosswords. They learn by listening to each other, cooperating to find the right answer. In this way, they both review the material and improve their teamwork skills.

Follow this link to get templates of different types of puzzles.

We also recommend watching a video with Alexei Konobeev. The speaker shared games to help your students remember new vocabulary. These games do not require special training and you can adapt them to any age and level.

We hope that all these games would serve their best to liven your vocabulary revision sessions and make them more meaningful and effective.

Which of these games have you tried? Which ones have you picked up for your next revision slot?