A Game for the Road

Research has shown that students whose parents play word games with them out perform in reading achievement and reading skill development. One word game that can be played while traveling to Grandma's house is "Change That Word." The first person says a word like "cat" and then spells it out loud. The next person has to change some part of that word to make another word. For example, they can change the beginning sound to make "sat." They might choose to change the ending sound to make "can." Maybe they change the vowel to make "cot." The previous word keeps getting changed by the next player. Each new word is spelled out loud. As the players get older, the words can get more complicated. For example, the players might add prefixes or suffixes to the first word to change them. The baseword, the prefix or the suffix can be the start of the next word. For example, the play may go something like this: "decide," "decided," "undecided," "unusual," "usual," "usually," "helpfully," "helpful," "helpless." If you want to keep points you could have each person receive a point who could not think of a word or who did not spell the word correctly. The person with the least points wins.