Creative Ways to Use Flash Cards for Spelling

Creative Ways to Use Flash Cards for Spelling

Flash cards may be a standard way to learn spelling words, but there are a few ways to make them a little less boring. There are two basic ways in which your child can approach making flash cards, both of which have learning benefits.

Skills Being Practiced

• Sight/spelling word recognition
• Vocabulary retention
• General word knowledge

What You Need

• Index cards or cardstock
• Pencil
• Set of markers
• Pen
• Computer with Comic Sans 12-point font

How to Play: Handwritten Flash Cards

1. Give your child index cards, a pencil, and his list of spelling words. Ask him to write one spelling word apiece on an index card.
2. This will help him recognize the words in his own handwriting and help him to start forming a visual memory of how each word looks when he writes it. This is important because when it comes time for him to write, either creatively or for a school assignment, he'll know what the word looks like in handwriting instead of just when it is typed.

How to Play: Computer Flash Cards

1. Just as seeing spelling words written in handwriting can be beneficial, so can seeing them in print. That's because your child isn't just learning his spelling words to use in writing; he's also learning them so he can understand them in the context of stories or other text he's reading.
2. The words may look very different in type than they do in his handwriting, so set your child up on the computer, set the font to Comic Sans 12 point (this is the font that many teachers agree most resembles handwriting), and have him type each word on its own row.
3. Print the document on cardstock and have him cut the words apart into makeshift flash cards.