My kids love games and they would pick playing a game over doing school work any day so I came up with this Candy Land game to help review our Spell to Write and Read phonograms and spelling words. Of course, you can modify this game to fit your own spelling and phonics program too.
(Scroll down for a video of how to play the game.)
First, get out your Candy Land board game. Ours is an old one so yours might look a little different but any Candy Land board will work!
Next, make note of all the colors on your game board squares and pull out the same colors of crayons, markers or colored pencils. Gather 35 white 3×5 index cards and cut them in half (so you have 70 cards for each of the 70 phonograms). Now write one phonogram per card, rotating the color you use.
If you want to review spelling words instead of phonograms then write out your spelling words on the index cards instead, making sure to alternate between the different colors.
Finally, you will need to make additional cards for each of the “special spots” on your game board.
Now it is time to play!
Rules are similar to the regular Candy Land game except draw a card from your phonogram or spelling word card pile.
On your turn, draw a card and say the phonogram. If it is a phonogram with one sound then move one colored space based on the color of the phonogram card you drew. If the phonogram says more than one sound then move the appropriate number of colored spaces.
For example,
“oe” says /O/ so you would move one blue space.
“ed” says /ed/ /d/ /t/ so you would move three purple spaces.
“a” says /a/ /A/ /ah/ so you would move three red spaces.
If you draw a “special card” then move to that space. It’s that easy!
If you want to play with spelling words then move the number of syllables in the word. For example, “man” is one syllable so you would move one green space. “Today” is two syllables so you would move two blue spaces.
Below is a short video of how to play.
Can’t see the video? Watch it here.
You might also be interested in my Fishing for Phonograms post.
I LOVE this idea- thank you so much!
This, and the other ideas for enrichment that you posted on the SWR group were very helpful! Thank you. It’s been a while since I played CandyLand, so I wanted to double check with moving on the board. If the phonogram is blue and has two sounds you move ahead 2 blue boxes or 12 spaces on the board. Is that correct? Not just 2 spaces of any color.
Kim, so glad the ideas I shared were helpful to you. You are correct that you would move two blue boxes if the phonogram has 2 sounds. My kids love getting the “ough” phonogram as it has 6 sounds which means they move ahead 6 spaces of that color…which gets them pretty close to winning! And if you were playing with spelling words and had one-syllable blue word you’d move one blue space, a two-syllable blue word would move you two blue spaces and so on. Enjoy!