Free Literacy Activities to do these School Holidays

Thinking about how you can motivate your child to continue working on their literacy skills over the holidays?
 

Here is a list of fun and easy to make literacy activities that you can do with your child to help them fill their literacy toolkits - without them even realising it!

1. Go Fish

Turn the classic Go Fish card game into a vocabulary-themed variation by creating playing cards full of written words. 

Players: Suitable for 2-4 players. 

The Goal of the Game: For those of you who haven’t played Go Fish, the goal of the game is to collect more pairs of matching cards than anyone else. Children must read the written word on the card they wish to play and be able to read the words that are requested by other players. 

It is a fun way to give children extensive exposure to a variety of words.

Words we recommend to include on your cards: 

• Regular Words (e.g. fish, bed, hand, bred, duck)
• Nonwords (e.g. gop, dorf, reb, flish, bif, sef)
  
  

2. Reading Board Game

Players: Suitable for 2-4 players. 

Goals of the Game: Each player takes a turn rolling the dice and moving around the game board. Each player must read the word (regular words and nonsense words are included) they land on. The winner is the first person to make it to the “finish” square on the board. 

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3. Memory

Players: Suitable for 1-4 players. 

Goals of the Game: Create 5-10 pairs of cards with a regular word or nonsense word written on each. Mix up the cards and ensure they are all face down. Turn over two cards at a time and get your child to read each card. If they match, the player keeps the cards. If they don’t match, the player turns the cards back over. The winner is the player with the most pairs at the end. 

Words we recommend to include on your cards: 

• Regular Words (e.g. lick, flip, frog, get, grub)
• Nonwords (e.g. lish, ped, jarf, flud, nord)
  
  

4. Word Bingo

Players: Suitable for 2 or more players. 

Goals of the Game: Each player has a game board full of words in different arrangements. The game host calls out words at random and players mark off the word if it is on their game board. Once a player’s game board is full, they yell out “Bingo!” to win.  

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While some may argue that literacy games don’t count as “real learning,” here at The Reading Spelling Toolkit, we can validate that games serve a very important purpose in learning. Children engage with games without the fuss (unlike homework at times), which makes them a perfect way to practise and cement understanding of important reading and spelling concepts. 

Our final tip? If you notice that your child is having difficulty reading any of the words suggested for these games, your child may require explicit teaching to understand the skills needed for reading and spelling. You can find out more about the skills taught in The Reading Spelling Toolkit here. 

As always, if you have any questions, visit us on Facebook and feel free to get in touch at any time.