My daughter has avoided word games like the plague in the past. She really didn’t like doing plain word lists, or vocabulary lists. Last year I even asked a fellow home schooling mom to “teach” my daughter spelling because it was just a serious point of friction with us. This year, I tried a different method. One of the things we tried was word ladders. Suddenly, the spelling, and having to come up with the word from a clue seemed to click into place. She loves this. By now you probably know that I am an advocate of learning through games. Here is another game we are going to try soon. It’s a rhyming word game called hig pig or higgy piggy. The clue is a riddle and the two words of the answer must rhyme. Here is an example. The riddle would be “a smelly chimp” and the answer would be a “funky monkey”. Now, if you are more traditional and just need a spelling list, or want to create your own lists for special projects or unit studies, the good news is that there are many online spelling lists where you can either find a subject matter list or create your own. I worried for a long time that we were just not getting the amount of spelling and vocabulary that we needed, but thanks to a few games, and a few lists, things are looking brighter. Why not give some of these tools a chance to work in your child’s education?