Spelling Art Activities for Better Spelling and Vocabulary

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Have you ever heard of the word Orthography? It means the art of spelling according to established usage. It is a part of language study that deals with letters and their sequence in the word, and it is considered an art.

The reason to talk about it was to connect the word ‘Art’ to the boring process of learning spelling. Combining art with spelling activities is effective not only for struggling learners but for every learner at every level. It stimulates the brain in a way that makes memorizing spelling easier.

So, are you ready to add some spelling art activities in your lesson plan? Be assured that you will have fun along with your students.

Spelling Art Activities

Let me give you some instructions first before we start exploring the amazing world of spelling art.

Most of these activities require art supplies other than colors such as glue, scissors, etc. And handling these irresponsibly can create great problems. So, make sure your students are old enough to use these tools. Even if they are, keep a close eye when they use it.
Check the number of words you are using for each activity. Too many words will overwhelm the students and slow down the process eventually. Make sure they properly memorized the words, even if they are just a few.
Even when the activity only requires writing the word, ask your students to spell them out loud for extra points. This will engage their auditory memory to help to memorize the spelling.
Don’t forget to review the words taught once in a while. You can use SpellQuiz Vocabulary Test or Spelling Test to check the progress.

Now that you are instructed, here are some spelling art activities to make your class more fun:

Body Words

Body vocabulary words are essential for ESL students as those words are often used in daily life. Yet, often the students forget the words when necessary. Why? Simply because they learned it by memorization. They often struggle to associate the word with a body part.

How can we avoid this hazard? Check out this fun project:

Draw or print body parts into pieces of paper. Leave space for students to write the name of the body part.
Divide the class into groups. Ask each group to build a skeleton (for internal organs) or a human body (for external body parts) with pieces of paper.
Teach them about anatomy beforehand so that they don’t put kidneys on the front side of the body accidentally.
Encourage your student to discuss among them. This way, their speaking skill will improve and they’ll be familiar with the sound of the newly learned words.

This can be an amazing Halloween activity! Also, you can ask them to build an animal body in the same way or a monster with ‘fangs’, ‘wings’ and ‘Scales’.

Plan a Town

This is the same procedure as learning body words but this gives the students a bit more freedom to get creative.

Draw or print things that are needed in a town such as hospitals, houses, schools, parks, etc.
You can ask your students to draw their own elements too in case they want to add different types of trees or architectural styles of building.
Make sure they write the name of the element on the paper.
Let your students work in small groups and plan a town. You can make certain elements a must-have in their design.
Make this a 3d project which would be more fun to work on.

Paint with Words

Are your students complaining about writing the same word over and over again?

It is a boring task, no doubt. But we can’t ignore the importance of practicing in any way, can we?

So, let’s make writing words fun for them! For example, consider you are going to teach your students the names of fruits.

Draw outlines of different fruits such as apples, oranges, peaches, etc.
Now ask your student what is the color of a certain fruit. For example, Apple is red, Banana is yellow and orange is, obviously, orange.
Now tell your students to color the fruits by writing their names in those colors over and over again.
Let them write horizontally, diagonally, or upside-down to add an artistic touch.

This spelling art activity works for scenery, planets, and animals- almost anything that can be drawn. Students can also use multiple colors to add shade.

Curious about how you can fluently learn and speak another language? Check out our phonetic spelling chart right now!

Rainbow Painting

This is a modified version of the above method.

Give the students a list of related words such as seasons, house-related words (roof, wall, door, window, etc.).
Then give them outlines of a rainbow.
The students need to color the rainbow by writing those words with one of the colors of the rainbow. For example: ‘Wall’ should be blue, ‘Roof’ should be red.

Secret Code

Take the ‘A for Apple, B for Ball’ to the next level. Here is a spelling art project that will improve the visual memory of the learners using this classic method.

Assign each letter a symbol. The symbol should be of something whose spelling starts with the letter. For example: A= Apple, B= Ball, C= Cat, D= Dog, E= Elephant, and so on.
Now give this list to the students. They need to properly understand which symbol is assigned to which letter.
Now use these picture codes instead of letters to write a word and tell the students to guess the word.
You can also give them words and ask them which symbols will be used.
For instance: ‘Green’ would be spelled ‘Goat- Rat- Elephant- Elephant- Nine’.

Magic Words

Kids will definitely love this. But how can you be so sure that the elders won’t?

Write words with white crayons on white paper. You can use boxes or tables.
Tell your students to color each box with a marker.
When the words magically appear, first tell the students to speak the spelling first and then the word.

Want to understand the transitional stage? Use our guide transitional stage of spelling development to learn about it now!

Film Review

There’s no way students won’t love this! To be honest, discussing about films are actually an ice-breaker and can make your shiest students speak up enthusiastically. It also helps students improve their vocabulary incredibly.

Instead of telling students to see a movie when they are home, arrange a movie day in your class.
Watch a movie together.
You can turn on the subtitle. This way your students can see the spelling and also improve fast-reading skills.
After watching the movie, discuss with your students and tell them to write a review.
Give them a list of topics and words that must be included. For example:

Topic	Words
Genre	Cast
Story	Production
Origin (based on a book/ true events, remake)	Soundtrack
Shooting	Emotion
Opinion	Nomination
Weak points	Visual effects

But you need to do some homework yourself before arranging the movie day

Watch the movie yourself first and figure out the list of words that are relevant.
You can give the students some information about the movie beforehand or tell them to research about them.
Show them some example of good movie reviews.

Act It Out

If you are teaching the students about compound words or finding words within words, this activity will be certainly adding some fun.

Divide the students into groups of two.
Give each group a list of compound words.
One group has to act out each part of the word, the other group has to guess the parts and build them together in a word.

Children with learning disabilities can have a hard time learning to spell. Learn how to help a child with spelling difficulties from our thorough guide.

List of Compound Words

You can find lists of compound words on the internet. Keep your students’ skill level in mind before choosing words. Below is an example for you:

Airline	Armchair	Backpack	Bookshelf
Cargo	Countdown	crossbow	Daydream
Dishwasher	Eardrum	Earthworm	Firearm
Footpath	Grandfather	Goodnight	Headdress
Hometown	Income	Jawbreaker	Jellyfish
Keyboard	Limestone	Matchbox	Motorcycle
Newsprint	Overflow	Passport	Payroll
Ponytail	Rainbow	Riverbank	Seashore
Skylight	Sunflower	Tailbone	Typewriter
Upstairs	Wallpaper	Waterfall	Weekend

Scavenger Hunt

This spelling art activity directly aims to teach spelling and review the spelling skills of the learners.

Give the students a list of words but this time, some letters would be missing from each word. You can use magnetic letter shapes for this activity.
Scatter the missing letters around the class and tell the kids to find them to make the words complete.
The letters of a word should have something in common. For example: put a red dot on every letter of ‘School’. Now if the student finds an S with a blue dot on, they can’t use it.
You can divide groups or let the whole class play together.

You can combine two or more of these activities to make a long-term project for students. The students will be invested for a long time and might find new words themselves to learn.

Final Thoughts

Are you looking for more fun activities for your class? Check out guide on learning spelling and make your students eager to learn new words.

For beginners, learning to spell new words sounds interesting. But as we proceed, learning becomes monotonous and students starts to get bored. That’s why these spelling art activities are needed. These methods are suitable for all level of learning and even the elder students would enjoy performing them. And not just for class, you can use these activities for teaching your kid at home too.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started.