Word Solitaire a Game to Help Improve Spelling

There are several ways to practice. You can write the words over and over again, say the words out loud then spell them, write them with your finger on a textured surface or play a game. Personally I like to have my son do all of these. But, the most fun way is to play a game. Our best liked game is Word Solitaire.

Letter Solitaire

For the way that we play the name does not quite fit. But it does give and idea of how to play.

The first thing that I did was to make letter cards for all of a set of spelling words. I made a letter card for each letter of each word and then added extra letter cards to make 52, which is the number of cards in a deck of cards.

To Play Solitaire Style:

Lay out your letter cards just like Solitaire. See the pictures!!

Make 7 stacks turning the first card up on the first stack.

Then lay down a card on each additional stack.

This time turn over the top card of your second stack.

Now lay down a card on each additional stack and turn over the top card on that stack.

Continue until you run out of cards.

You should end up with the 1^st stack having 1 card and

the 2nd stack having 2 cards,

the 3^rd stack having 3 cards and so on until

the 7^th stack that has 7 cards.

The remaining letters will become your stock pile or letter pool.

As you make your words you can remove them from the stack to reveal the letters underneath or you can leave them there to reuse the letters. In Solitaire you put the aces to the side and build your suites. In word Solitaire you can build Words instead. We made a rule thought that says that if you remove a word then it can no longer be used for other words. You could choose instead that you could only reuse the letters if you can put the word into an empty column. We started with just 28 letter cards. This is actually harder to do. You may want to use the 100 Scrabble letters and end when all this weeks spelling words have been spelled. What ever you do make it fun.

I Still Don't Get It!!

If you're still not clear how to play then practice using the Solitaire game on your computer. You will find it by:

Click on the Start menu.

Click on Games.

Click on Solitaire.

What kind of games do you play to improve on spelling or any subject?

Spelling List: band, beg, end, cloth, chick, brush, plot, punch, spank, trick

Letter Cards:

A �¨ 3 letters
B �¨ 3 letters
C �¨ 3 letters
D �¨ 1 letters
E �¨ 4 letters
G �¨ 1 letters
H �¨ 2 letters
I �¨ 4 letters
K �¨ 2 letter
L �¨ 2 letters
N �¨ 6 letters
O �¨ 4 letters
P �¨ 4 letters
R �¨ 3 letters
S �¨ 2 letters
T �¨ 2 letters
U �¨ 4 letters
Blank �¨ 2 letters

After some time we decided to just make up a bunch of extra cards and pullout the ones that we needed for the spelling or vocabulary list that we were using. Now we use a �eScrabble set�f It has many more cards but we love the game and are pleased with the game continuing.

Scrabble letters, 100 tiles

A �¨ 9 letters
B �¨ 2 letters
C �¨ 2 letters
D �¨ 4 letters
E �¨ 12 letters
F �¨ 2 letters
G �¨ 3 letters
H �¨ 2 letters
I �¨ 9 letters
J �¨ 1 letter
K �¨ 1 letter
L �¨ 4 letters
M �¨ 2 letters
N �¨ 6 letters
O �¨ 8 letters
P �¨ 2 letters
Q �¨ 1 letter
R �¨ 6 letters
S �¨ 4 letters
T �¨ 6 letters
U �¨ 4 letters
V �¨ 2 letters
W �¨ 2 letters
X �¨ 1 letter
Y �¨ 2 letters
Z �¨ 1 letter
Blank �¨ 2 letters.