Reading Games for Kids | Games for Helping Kids Learn to Read

Developing Your Children's Reading Ability

What are Reading Games?

Developing your child’s reading skills is so important. Not only does reading help with your child’s brain development, but it also provides you with the chance to spend quality time with your child. However, getting your child interested in reading can be difficult and that’s where reading games for kids and activities can be helpful.

What are the Best Reading Games for Kids?

When it comes to reading games, you can choose to buy games for your kids to play or you can use games that are free and proven to help develop their reading skills.

Top Free Reading Games

Matching Cards

This game is simple. All you’re going to do is get ten cue cards and choose five words that your child is currently learning to read. You’ll write the chosen words on two separate cue cards. Then you’re going to flip all the cards upside down and take turns with your child to flip the cards up.

If two cards match, then the player gets to keep those cards and the person with the most cards at the end wins. Matching cards help children to learn how to spell and read the words that they are practicing. It also helps to develop their visual learning skills.

Go Fish

You can play this reading game with a pre-made deck of cards with your child, or you can make your own with cue cards. In this case, you’re going to choose 20 different words that your child is learning to write and write them onto two separate cue cards.

You’ll shuffle them and then pass out five cards to each player (two to four people can play). Then you start with one person asking another if they have a certain word in their hand. If they do, the player must give the person who asked them that card. If they don’t then the person who asked must pick up a card from the deck.

The goal is to match the same words together until there are no more cards left. The person with the most cards at the end wins. Again, this version of Go Fish helps your kid to learn how to spell, read out words and develop their visual learning skills.

Yes and No Word Game

For this game, you will pick a word that your child is learning and then they can ask you questions that have yes or no answers to figure out what the word is. Examples of questions to ask would be “Does this word start with the letter _?” or “Does this word have an 'ee' sound in it?” or “Does the word have the vowel ‘I’ in it?”

This word game helps your child to learn their letters and vowels as well as the sounds that different letters can make when put together.

PBS Kids Reading Games

PBS offers many online reading games that your child can play for free. These games range in different learning levels with games like Alpha Pig’s Paint By Letter for kids learning their letters to Create Stories with Clifford! These educational games can help your child to develop their reading skills through the different levels that they will progress through.

Education.com Reading & Writing Games

Another way for your kid to take part in online reading games is with Education.com which offers a variety of reading and writing games for kids on their website for free. These games are for kids from preschool age up to grade 8. This free resource doesn’t offer only educational games either, but lesson plans and worksheets that can help you make learning how to read fun for your child while also developing their skills.

The Best Reading Games for Kids