If you’re looking for FUN ways to incorporate language activities into your classroom and/or after school routine, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve rounded up 11 grammar games for kids as well as 7 super fun vocabulary games that are sure to take the yawn out of your language arts lesson plans.
As a full-time blogger, I obviously have a passion for the written word, so you can imagine my delight when my daughter told me she had a lesson about nouns, verbs, and adjectives at school a few weeks ago. She goes to a Montessori school, so once a new concept is introduced to her, she’s free to work on the material whenever she chooses. So far, she seems pretty keen on all of the language arts material she’s been exposed to, which is what initially led me to put this post together.
I’m always looking for fun ways I can help develop upon the things my daughter is learning at school, and with the cold weather quickly approaching, I’m in dire need of ideas to keep us from climbing the walls after school and on weekends when it’s too chilly to spend time outdoors.
I hope these grammar games for kids inspire you to think outside the box and find fun and creative ways to get the little ones in your life excited to learn about verbs, nouns, adjectives, and everything in between!
10 Classroom Activities and Grammar Games for Kids
Learning Resources Cooking Up Sentences Game
This is one of my favorite grammar games for kids, although I feel it’s more suited to children over the age of 8. It’s a fun way to help kids learn how to build sentences properly, and one of many fabulous language games for kids to incorporate into your classroom lesson plans.
If you’re looking for language activities to try in your classroom – or to play with your kids at home – this is a great one to consider. Children will need a basic understanding of the 8 parts of speech before they can play, but once they have that under their belt, this game helps take things a step further by challenging kids to identify the parts of speech in sentences. Give it a try – you won’t be disappointed!
Grammar Taboo | 123 Homeschool 4 Me
Have you ever played the game Taboo? It’s a lot of fun and gets kids pretty silly and excited, and 123 Homeschool 4 Me has found a great way to use this game as motivation for kids to pay attention during their grammar lessons. CLICK HERE to learn how you can create your own game of Grammar Taboo to use with your students!
Learning Resources Go to Press Grammar Game
We have owned so many Learning Resources games over the years and I’ve never been disappointed in any of them. Whether you want to focus on spelling, verb tense, grammar, or word capitalization, this game can be played with up to 6 players, making it a great investment for teachers who are looking for tabletop grammar games for kids to invest in.
Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs Mystery Word Game | Teachers Pay Teachers
If you’re looking for grammar games for kids that double as center activities for the classroom, this is a great option to consider. With 40 mystery word cards, this is a simple yet fun activity that requires kids to read, think, and speak in groups of 3, all while practicing their nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
No list of grammar games for kids would be complete without Mad Libs, and this book contains over 125 of Mad Libs you can use in the classroom and beyond. For those who have never heard of Mad Libs, the concept is equal parts simple and fun. One player asks another for a list of different kinds of words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) to help fill in the blanks of a story, and once the words have been added, he or she reads the ridiculous passage out loud. It’s so much fun, and a great way to get kids excited to learn about grammar and language arts!
When I asked my teacher friends for their top 3 suggestions to help me put together this list of grammar games for kids that are suitable for a classroom setting, almost all of them mentioned BrainPOP in some way, shape, or form. I had never heard of it before, and while I am not a member and haven’t personally tried any of their games, this is a wonderful site for teachers who are looking for educational games to support their lesson plans. In addition to grammar games for kids, they also offer math, science, health, social studies, arts, and technology games (to name a few).
Parts of Speech Sort Worksheet | Teachers Pay Teachers
This simple and FREE grammar worksheet is a great center activity that can be used to ensure the kids in your class understand the difference between a noun, verb, and adjective while you navigate through your grammar lessons, while also doubling as a great quiet activity for bad weather days!
Hot Potato Grammar | Teachers Pay Teachers
I don’t know about you, but I love a game of hot potato, and this is one of many fabulous grammar activities for kids I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s a mix between the games ‘hot potato’ and ‘musical chairs’, and is sure to get the kids in your class excited about their nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Parts of Speech Color By Word | Pinterest
I found this pin on Pinterest, and if you click on it, it takes you to a Google drive document by Melissa Mazur of 3 color by word worksheets designed to get kids practicing their parts of speech lessons. I thought it was really clever and a great quiet activity to use in the classroom or at home, and I couldn’t resist sharing!
7 Vocabulary Games for Kids
Vocabulary Kaboom! | The Starr Spangled Planner
Okay, this game is GENIUS. I cannot do it justice by trying to explain it in a few short sentences here, but I promise you it’s easy to re-create and incredibly fun. What I love most about this game is that you can use it to teach just about anything – grammar, vocabulary, multiplication tables, you name it! CLICK HERE to find out all about Kaboom! and why it’s at the top of my list of favorite vocabulary games for kids!
Vocabulary Memory Game
I don’t know where I first saw this idea, but it’s another one of my favorite vocabulary games for kids as it’s so easy to make and you can easily create a new version for each set of vocabulary words you’re trying to teach your students (or kids at home). Print off the vocabulary words and their corresponding definitions, laminate, and cut into separate pieces making sure all the pieces are the same size. Mix them up and place them face down, and the game is ready to play. Each time a child flips over a word and its corresponding meaning, they get a match and another turn. The person who has the most cards at the end wins.
Psssst. If you’re on the market for a good and inexpensive laminator, we’ve owned our Fellowes M5 95 Laminator for a couple of years now and I highly recommend it. I laminate a lot but didn’t want anything big and bulky that would take up a lot of room in my home office. I love how fast this one heats up and use it a couple of times a week, and so far it’s held up with no issues!
If you’re looking for educational games you can use in the classroom and at home for family game night, Blurt! is high on my list of recommendations. The premise behind the game is simple – one person reads a definition, and the person to blurt out the corresponding word first wins. What I love about this game is that you can get creative and simultaneously use it as a tool to teach kids self-control. For example, you can organize kids into groups of 4 or 6, but only allow 2 kids to square off against one another for each round of Blurt! This forces the kids who are watching to exercise self-control as they refrain from yelling out the answer.
Four-in-a-Row Vocabulary Game | Teachers Pay Teachers
Based on the game Connect Four, this is another one of my favorite vocabulary games for kids, and I love that this comes with a blank game board you can use over and over again with different vocabulary words you want to target throughout the year.
Roll a Word | Teachers Pay Teachers
If your students/kids groan whenever it’s time to practice their vocabulary words, this is a great activity to try, and I love that the template is editable as you can use this over and over again. This vocabulary game goes beyond reciting definitions and gets kids thinking about synonyms and antonyms, how to use their vocabulary words in a sentence, and even puts their artistic abilities to the test. CLICK HERE to find out more.
Charades and/or Pictionary
Both of these classic games can be used to help kids learn their vocabulary words in the classroom. You can choose one game over the other, or have your students decide on their own based on the word they’ve been given and their acting/artistic abilities. Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of incorporating these vocabulary games into your lesson plans as they offer a great way to get kids to think beyond simple memorization.
Minute to Win It Vocabulary Games | Teachers Pay Teachers
Minute to Win It games are a lot of fun for kids (and adults!) and these ideas are the perfect compliment to your vocabulary lesson plans as they help kids develop their descriptive and expressive language skills. CLICK HERE to learn more.
While our children don’t formally begin learning how to structure sentences properly until they are in elementary school, they begin developing their grammatical skills much sooner through speech. Grammar plays a key role in the development of both receptive and expressive language skills, and a child with grammar difficulties will struggle with important skills like reading, writing, spelling, and storytelling, and may also have challenges with planning, sequencing, and executive functioning tasks.
It’s important that parents and teachers use proper grammar while speaking to their children, and that they correct and explain grammatical mistakes children make in a non-threatening way.
I hope this collection of grammar games for kids as well as the other language activities we included in this post prove useful to you, and help inspire you to find fun and creative ways to get the kids in your life excited about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and beyond!
This post contains affiliate links.
If you found this collection of grammar games for kids as well as the other language activities we included in this post helpful, please share this post on Pinterest!
