5 Fun Games to Improve Reading Skills

January 16, 2021 / Parent Resources

Finding it difficult to get your child to read? We know that kids may often find it hard to stay engaged with their reading material. Here are some games for reading skills to improve your child’s vocabulary and make them better readers (without them even realizing it!).

Word Memory: Games to Improve Reading Skills

Games to improve reading skills: Depending on your child’s age and interests, select 5-10 words you’d like to introduce them to. Next, print each word twice on separate index cards. Your child needs to flip two cards at a time while reading each word aloud. If they match, they get to keep them. If they don’t, the next player takes a turn. If you want to make this game a little more challenging, you could use rhyming words instead of matching pairs. For tech-driven children games, check out Osmo’s Words an games for developing reading skills!

Go Fish: Games for Developing Reading Skills

Games for developing reading skills: Print a few words on separate index cards and make pairs of each word (just like we did for the Word Memory games for kids) Then, shuffle and deal 3-5 cards to each child. Kids will need to take turns asking the other players for a card to match the one held in his/her hand. However, if the player doesn’t have a matching card, they say “go fish” and your child has to draw from the remaining deck of cards. Keep playing till all the cards are used up! Osmo’s Lettertopia is another such game that can hone your child’s reading skills is a games to improve reading skills.

Odd One Wins: Games for Reading Skills

Print three words clearly on separate index cards, making pairs of each word the games to improve reading skills. Next, choose another word without creating a matching card for it. Deal 3-6 cards to each player. Kids need to take turns drawing a card from a player to their left. If the card matches the one in their hand, they need to read the word aloud. The games for developing reading skills continues until every card is matched. The kid who holds that one card that doesn’t have a matching card, wins!

Monopoly: Reading Skills Games

Create your own Monopoly board with 4-5 squares on each side on these reading skills games. Prepare cards with families of words that kids might be familiar with (for example night, light, right; bent, sent, went, etc) Make sure to color-code each word family on each side of the board. Add game directions on the board like “take another turn” or “go back 3 spaces”. Also, prepare score sheets for each child (with their color-coded headings for each word family!) Finally, roll the dice so your kids can move it around the board. As your child lands on a word, they need to read it out loud and write it down under its appropriate “word family” category. Ask your child to come up with more rhyming words for each word they land on (for extra points!).

Rhyming and Reading: Games to Improve Reading skills

This is a simple reading exercise an games to improve reading skills. Read a book alongside your child and encourage them to point out words in the book that have the same spelling pattern games for developing reading skills. Once they point them out, ask them to come up with more words with the same pattern. Reading skills games: You could also ask them to underline the parts of the word that sound the same as the original word. For example, if they came across the word “black”, and then find another word “track”, they could underline “ack”.

Once your child learns more words and is able to pronounce them correctly, they automatically become more effective readers and speakers. For online games to improve reading skills to better your child’s vocabulary, check the rest of our website. We also offer coding games, puzzles for kids, best math games for kids, and more.