Both kids are very excited about Christmas, we have family out from South Africa and they are loving having everyone around.  But even though they have family around and even though it is Christmas their thirst for learning is still all around.  My oldest is reading a lot and my youngest still has his never-ending questions about almost anything.  He also keeps trying to spell out words for me and I have been really impressed with some of the harder words that he has been trying so as a way of encouraging his interest in figuring out words I thought we could try an Alphabet Challenge but since Christmas is just around the corner instead of trying one of the birds or animal challenges we went with this Christmas Alphabet Challenge from Activity Village

I love these pages.  And yes the kids do make mistakes but that is how they learn.  To beginning with one of them wrote wreath without the w (which is why it is on the r line) but then we chatted about silent w and even had a go at trying to figure out other words with a starting wr.

I love practicing spelling like this.  I always hated spelling, I could never spell and trying to spell words always filled me with fear so keeping spelling fun and interesting is just as important for me as making maths hands-on.  And when the kids associate spelling a word with an activity they remember it.

We have found with our youngest that doing a word search on the same topic before we try an alphabet challenge does help.  He seems to be more confident and that extra confidence means he tries other harder words.  Earlier this week we did some Christmas themed word searches and crosswords like the one below – Christmas Word Search  and I noticed he included most of the words from his word search and the ones that he included were all spelt correctly.

(We do a lot of word activities and have found we tend to do them in a pattern – word searches, followed by crosswords, then word scrambles and then alphabet challenge type pages – it is just the order which seems to work with us).