Spelling and Word Games

Crossword puzzles, hangman and other word games are great fun--and helpful ways to practice spelling skills, build vocabulary and improve your powers of deductive reasoning. Since English words aren’t always spelled the way they sound, activities that give you practice in visualizing how words are spelled correctly can also help you increase your verbal proficiency. Discover fun ways to expand your vocabulary and fine-tune your spelling through these direct links on The Times Launch Point Web site: https://www.latimes.com/launchpoint.

Level 1

Alphabet Superhighway: Are you up for the Wild World of Word Challenges? Try 16 events that range from decoding patterns and spelling words you hear to finding missing letters and tracking down animal idioms.

https://www.ash.udel.edu/ash/challenge/challengeframe.html

FunBrain: Language Arts Games: Help Spellaroo make it to the “Land of the Joeys” and the Plural Girls find their friends who got lost in the bubble machine. Test your knowledge of words with this fun assortment of games and puzzles.

https://www7.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/getskill_s.cgi?A1=selects&A2;=la&A4;=3&A7;=3

The Learning Site: Spelling: Help the squirrel reach the bag of nuts by finding and correcting the misspelled words in these activities geared for grades 1-6.

https://www.harcourtschool.com/sitemap/#SPELLING

Level 2

Scramble-Saurus: Learn about topics ranging from dinosaurs and the rain forest to Harry Potter and computers as you perform a series of unscrambling maneuvers.

https://www.funbrain.com/scramble/

Wacky Web Tales: Polish your knowledge of words and parts of speech through these fun and surprising stories where you provide the important details.

https://www.eduplace.com/tales

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Try a variety of word games such as Definition Demolition, Flip Flop or Matchmaker, read interesting stories about the meanings and origins of words and access an online dictionary and thesaurus.

https://www.m-w.com/dictionary

Level 3

Vocabulary.com: Discover how knowing the root of a word can give you important clues to its meaning. Find an assortment of puzzles on various topics and levels that can help you build your vocabulary and prepare for PSAT and SAT exams.

https://www.vocabulary.com/

Quiz: Get ready for the SAT by playing four games that quiz you on the 100 most common SAT words.

https://www.quia.com/jg/66022.html

The Word Gamer’s Paradise: Discover how word games can be played at a competitive level and explore numerous resources and online word games.

https://www.fun2play.com

EXPLORER’S QUEST

The answer to this Internet quiz can be found in the sites at right.

What six-letter baseball noun comes from the Old French words non and pair?

CLUE: See Vocabulary.com (Baseball Puzzles)

Find What You Need to Know: Have a project on California history? Need help doing a math problem? Launch Point covers more than 150 topics for getting your schoolwork done. Go to https://www.latimes.com/launchpoint/ for the full list of subjects and direct links to the best Internet sites.

Answer to last week’s Quest: A simile can create a word picture by using the words “like” and “as” to make a comparison between objects that are similar in some way.

Launch Point is produced by the UC Irvine department of education, which reviews each site for appropriateness and quality. Even so, parents should supervise their children’s use of the Internet. This column was designed by Rocio Jaramillo, Heather Thirlwall, Vanessa Ortiz and Anna Manring.