Puzzles for Children

[whisky]

Greetings

I was sitting at the computer, just finishing a session,when my kindergarten aged grandson sat on my knee.
Much to my surprise, he understood the screen contents instantly, and suggested a word, 'cat'.

Of course I would like to encourage this sort of activity for inquiring young minds.

Before I start searching through what might be out there on the internet, I thought it appropriate to ask if any members here have had good experience or good suggestions for me.

Thanks

[Jacki]

My dad was a schoolteacher for many years at a prestigious private boys school. The favourite exercise he would give his class was the word puzzle in the Sydney Morning Herald which is very similar to Chi except it doesn't allow most words ending in an s.
Anyway the kids would comb the dictionaries (not online) and try to find the most words (they just had to be a word whether common or not!).
Then he would ask them to come up with their own 9 letter word and all the possible words to be made from it and that was received with enthusiasm too.
But the number one thing he always said is that if a child reads then they are ahead of the pack and that it makes things so much easier for them later on. Recognising words, spelling, context, grammar, so much is absorbed from the written word. Jigsaw puzzles, eye spy, word games like A-Z on different topics and reading are all engaging activities that stimulate young minds (and older ones too!)
Have you noticed subtitles and news captions with so many misspellings now because it seems some in a generation haven't read widely enough to know the difference between fare and fair or sought and sort etc?
Perhaps I'm just getting old because I'm sounding like my father, but even just today on one of our national morning breakfast programmes called Sunrise they had two major misspellings like those mentioned above - but because I am getting older I can't for the life of me recall exactly what they were!!

[TRex]

I think it is well-established that reading leads to accurate spelling. Poor spellers are not readers.

[whisky]

I wholeheartedly agree that reading is of great merit.
That is why I am strongly inclined to assist and encourage.

I seek something like Chihuahua for my Grandson.
My reasons include;

Online rather than printed, so there little room for argument.

Scoring will pander to his strong competitive streak, and help develop goal setting.

Sitting on my lap participating, is far better than any app.

Cheers
Michael

[Alan W]

I have at times given some idle thought to the idea of a Chihuahua version for young players.

I suspect it would be a major problem to come up with suitable word lists. Presumably there would need to be different sized word lists for different age groups. But is there such a thing as a single list of words corresponding to the vocabulary of a - say - five-year old?

If you search for something like "word wheel puzzles for kids" you will find some sites, but I haven't explored them. A lot of them seem to require registration.

[whisky]

Alan

Thank you for your guidance.

Michael

[birdy]

I think it is well-established that reading leads to accurate spelling. Poor spellers are not readers.

I suspect that is usually true, especially for the kinds of mistakes that are made because the writer is going by how the word sounds, e.g. sort and sought, or for homophones.

On the other hand, I knew someone who had problems spelling - a very good, and avid reader (he read the Iliad when he was seven, which was a major pain because it meant I had to read it too in order to be able to compete in our dinner-time guessing games).  He outgrew that, by the way, and spells fine now.