Fill the Bushel Spelling (or Sight Word) Game

This week was my first time volunteering in my son's 3rd grade class. The teacher had me work one-on-one with a few students helping them learn their spelling words. It reminded me of just how boring studying spelling words can be. In brainstorming new ways to practice with my own oldest son, I came up with this idea.

This little game focuses on learning five words.

Quiz your child or look at their pretest to see which words on the list they are struggling with. Those are the five.

For this game you need to print five bushels and a special die. Download the 6-page PDF I made here. Print onto heavyweight cardstock. Cut, fold, and glue the die together.

Either laminate the five bushel pages or slip them into plastic sheet protectors. Label each on the line at the top of the page with one challenging spelling word (or use sight words if that's what you're working on). Use a fine tip-dry erase marker.

Now grab your kiddo and tell them it's time to "Fill the Bushel."

How to Play

The player rolls the die. If they roll a four, for example, they find the page with that number on it, look at the word at the top of the page, and copy it onto one of the apples in the bushel with the dry-erase marker.

If the player rolls the worm, they roll again until the die shows a number. That number tells them what bushel to erase a word from; that was a bad apple and it must be thrown out. If they roll the number that has no words yet, he/she moves on without any erasing (rolling again to see what bushel to add a word to).

Kids can either stop rolling when one of the bushels is full or keep going until ALL the bushels are full, keeping track of which were filled 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

The repetition of writing the five words again and again is sure to help him remember them when it's test time.

My son got caught up in the game and forgot we were practicing spelling. That totally fills MY bucket.

UPDATE: A blog follower came up with a great adaptation for her kiddo. She plans to use this little game to help her kindergartener practice writing certain letters. (What a good idea!!) I modified the PDF so the apples have ruled guidelines to help kids. Download this variation here.