How children learn to write through play

Learning comes naturally when you play: Games with letters and words motivate children to learn and practise writing. What games are there and why are they fun?

Playing and learning go hand in hand: games arouse emotions, they activate and challenge us. These are ideal conditions for learning. Children acquire social, communicative and cognitive skills while playing. Games involving writing motivate children to learn to write and encourage them to explore new letters, words and spellings.

Font memory

The same words are cut out of brochures (or copied or photographed from signs, posters etc.) and stuck onto cards. With this memory game, beginners learn to recognise their first typefaces.

Letter twister

Six (or more) cards are labelled with letters and stuck on the floor or carpet in a 3×2 grid. The game leader names letters one after the other and the players take it in turns to place their hand or foot on the corresponding letter card. For experienced players, the game master names short words that are spelt with hands and feet.

City-Country-River

Or also: candy - nonsense word - cartoon heroine. For each category, the players write down a term as quickly as possible for an initial letter that was determined at the start of the game, for example «L» for «gingerbread», «Lussel» and «Lillifee».

About the author:

Johanna Oeschger is a literature and linguistics scholar, teaches German and English at upper secondary level and works as a media didactician at LerNetz.

App tip:

Happi words : What do mushroom, tree and bear have in common? In this association game for children of primary school age and above, the aim is to find what three pictures have in common and put together the solution word from the matching letters. Available for iOS. Cost: Fr. 2.-