Sidewalk Chalk Word Games

Sidewalk Chalk Word Games for Elementary School

Get outside and try these sidewalk chalk word games! These activities are so much fun and truly feel more like play than learning. Kids, however, will be working on reading, vocabulary, parts of speech, and more.

These word games are appropriate for kids in 1st – 5th grade. Most of the games can be adjusted for whatever difficulty level you need.

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We used Crayola sidewalk chalk that I bought at Walmart. This chalk is very good quality with bold colors that show up well on the concrete. I also think the sticks last a long time as far as chalk goes, and we’ve never had trouble with it washing off the sidewalk completely.

Word Families

Beginning readers will have a great time listing out word families!

List as many words as you can think of that have the same base.

Here are some good ones to try:

• -ink (drink, think, pink, etc)
• -ing (sing, thing, fling, etc)
• -ell (bell, tell, smell, etc)
• -ack (back, pack, sack, etc)
• -ight (fight, light, tight, etc)
• -ill (will, pill, bill, etc)
• -ed (bed, red, led, etc)

What Words Go With ____________?

This is a fun and creative vocabulary game! Choose a word that expresses a fairly wide concept, and then list all the words you can think of that go with that concept.

For example, what words go with traveling? Car, bus, camera, suitcase, plane, backpack, souvenir, landmarks, sightseeing, map, etc.

Other categories to try:

• School
• Zoo
• Playground
• Birthday Party
• Christmas
• Autumn
• Summer
• Carnival or Fair
• Beach
• Grocery Store

How Many Words Can You Make from this Word?

Choose a long word, and challenge kids to make as many words as they can from the letters in that word. They do not have to use every letter in the original word for the words they make. Short words are good!

Long words that make lots of smaller words: friendship, teacher, Christmas, science, dinosaur, vacation, spectacular, education, butterfly, gardening

Word Unscramble

I made a list of scrambled words for Janie to unscramble, and she loved this!

She also enjoyed creating her own list of scrambled words for me to unscramble! This involves some good thinking skills. When you write the scrambled word, you have to make sure you include all the letters, but change the order enough to make it hard to figure out.

“Yolk” was really hard for me to figure out until I realized that she was choosing words that go with things she could see in our backyard. We have chickens!

Match the Opposites

Make two lists of words, one list on the left, and then the opposite of those words on the right. Then ask your child to match up the opposites by drawing a chalk line between them.

Other good opposites to add would be smooth/rough, up/down, above/below, quiet/loud, tall/short. Then you can probably think of even more!

Synonym Match-Up

This is very similar to our opposites activity above. Make lists of words that mean the same thing, and ask your child to match them up.

Personally, I think that synonyms require a bit more thought than opposites. I also think that antonyms (opposites in the context of vocabulary) and opposites are not 100% the same thing. For example, summer is the opposite of winter, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider those words to be antonyms in the same way that kind and rude are antonyms. The internet seems to think that opposites and antonyms are basically the same thing.

I would use the term opposites with kindergartners and first graders, and teach antonyms to older kids.

What are your thoughts?

Again, it’s very valuable to have kids create the lists of synonyms for someone else to match up. Brainstorming words that mean the same thing leads to good thoughts and discussions. For example, we discussed that “goofy” does not necessarily mean the same thing as “funny.” Someone can act goofy but actually be annoying to others haha. We decided that “silly” was a better synonym for “goofy.”

Rhyming Words

Choose a word and then brainstorm words that rhyme with it!

Here’s where English is lots of fun… rhyming words aren’t necessarily spelled the same. “Bread” rhymes with “red,” for example. And words that ARE spelled the same sometimes DON’T rhyme, such as “dough” and “through” haha.

What are the rules in English? No one knows!

Word Ladders

Make word ladders by changing a word into another word. However, you can only change one letter at a time!

For younger kids, you can just make lists of words. It’s amazing how many different words you can make by just changing one letter each time!

Then for older kids, maybe age 8 and up, see if they can figure out how to change one word into another word.

You can change “head” into “tail” using the steps shown below.

Alliteration Sentences

Alliteration is the use of the same beginning sound in a series of words. Kids LOVE making silly sentences with alliteration!

Add the Adjectives

Work on creative adjectives by writing sentence with blanks, sort of like Mad Libs. Then ask your child to fill in the blanks with descriptive adjectives!

This is a great time to discuss that adjectives can tell which (that, those), whose, what kind of (ugly, funny, purple), or how many. So if I say, “Give me those five ugly pillows that are on the sofa,” those, five, and ugly are all adjectives describing pillows.

Want more ideas? Check out our Sidewalk Chalk Math Games!

See them here: Sidewalk Chalk Math Games

There are tons of ideas for grades 1 – 5!