Spelling Word Ice Cream Melt
This slight variation of the traditional “hangman” game provides a new flavor of spelling word
practice!
Supplies: Paper; Spelling Word List; Crayons
Preparation: Create a game template by writing the alphabet at the top of the paper, and drawing
an ice cream cone with eight scoops of ice cream. Make copies for future games.
Have your child choose a word from her spelling list but make sure she doesn’t tell you
what it is. Under the ice cream cone picture, tell her to write dashes for each letter of the word
she has chosen. You will begin guessing the letters that are in the word.
If you guess a letter that is in the word, your learner will write the letter on the correct
dash. If you guess a letter that is not in the word, your learner will cross out the alphabet letter at
the top of the paper, and then scribble one of the scoops of ice cream. Watch out! Your goal is to
guess the word before all of the ice cream has “melted.”
Switch roles so that your child will now be guessing the words. Make a tally mark for
every word he knows prior to the ice cream melting. Tell him that when he reaches 10 tally
marks, you will both go out for an ice cream cone!
During this game your child will be learning the structure of his spelling words in a
variety of ways. Practice and awareness of the number of letters in the word, use of the correct
letters, ordinal placement of the letters, and the distinction between correct and incorrect
spellings are examples of how spelling words are learned.
♠ You can do word list searches on the Internet for any topic. Type “list of animal words” in
your search bar and dozens of lists will be found. Give a topic grouping of words to your
youngster and use those words for your games!
This is a quick and easy game for your students to do in pairs during transition or practice time
in the classroom. It’s also a nice change to assign this game as homework instead of giving a
traditional worksheet assignment.
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