My son liked to spell words at age three--on computer games and with magnetic letters on the fridge. But one of his favorite games was identifying words that people spelled out for him orally. He got a lot of attention at that age from other kids at church because he could do this. We first noticed that he had this ability at 2 1/2 when my husband spelled out the word that he didn't want our son to hear because he was telling me that he was hiding the J-E-E-P in the garage. My son asked "where is the jeep?" So I started spelling out words for him when he was in the tub and he thought this was a lot of fun. Much older kids would spell words for him that he had not been taught and he could identify most of them and he could do it faster than his cousin who was six years older at the time. He has always liked word games.
At nine he is finishing up learning thousands of words for a spelling bee and last night he enjoyed playing the vocabulary game on freerice.com before bed. He also likes to game shows "Chain Reaction."
When I give my son an oral pretest over new words in his spelling bee book, I notice that vowel combinations still give him some trouble, unless he has seen the word a few times. I always pretest him orally and mark off the words on his spelling bee list that he already knows and only work on the ones he missed so there are not so many to work on.
We have had a lot of fun with this.
