What's the best, not too much effort thing, I can do to help improve my children's spelling over the summer holidays?

[coodawoodashooda]

Just that. Any book/game/app or anything else recommdations?

Read together

Scrabble/junior Scrabble

Focus on reading; good spellers are usually good readers. Use subtitles whenever they’re watching television. Play games such as hangman.

5 minute mum on Instagram. She has also written books.

How old are they?

Read a lot.

Practise the spellings. It only needs a couple of minutes, a few times a day.

Spelling Shed is really good, we use it at the school I work in. 5 minutes a day and you will be shocked at the progress children make .

Read... sorry to be boring.

Another vote for spelling shed. Mine doesn't particularly like the interface so we do 50/50 - I'll make them write them out as i think that also helps instead of just typing.

The best thing you can do is, I think, push reading for fun. Maybe try the sorts of books that you haven't done previously, eg poetry or non fiction focused on a hobby or interest such as dinosaurs, graphic novels or comics. If they are at the younger end of primary school, check to see if your library are offering any sessions for children over the holiday. They do usually, and you can borrow some books at the same time!
Could they write/send a postcard to a grandparent, aunt etc? Preferably someone who will write back!
There are plenty of word searches available online for all ages, so that might help too.

My mum always used to say 'if you never read you'll never get better at spelling' so I agree with PP lots of reading

Read a lot. Also games like Bananagrams, Scrabble, Boggle etc.
You don’t say how old they are but the CBeebies website used to have some great Alphablocks games for younger kids. Not sure if that’s still a thing as it was a long time ago for me!

If they struggle with reading then toe by toe will help with both. If they don’t struggle with reading then reading and possibly writing letters to relatives.

Turn the subtitles on. We watch everything with subtitles. It hugely helped my youngest. That and reading together.

Read. Read. Read. And read some more. My spelling and vocab is seriously good because I read so much when I was younger. Trying to teach spelling is boring and counterproductive. Find books your children love and read with them. Have loads of books in the house and encourage them to read whatever they want, especially stuff that's not necessarily 'age appropriate'. Get books on stuff they are really into - dinosaurs, space, horses, whatever. Go to Waterstones (or any other bookshop that makes you want to stay and look at books) and get them to browse and choose a couple of books. Have a really positive attitude towards reading, and model that by reading in front of them.

Rhyming games if they have all of the phonics. If they have the sounds then rhyming helps to group words by sound.
Ways of going over top 100 high frequency words. These made up the majority of words we write.
Then reading. It can be anything that appeals, comics, recipes, subtitles…..

As everyone said reading makes so much difference.

We love fridge magnets here. Older children we have words that they write notes and 'poems' (mostly rude) and the younger rearrange letters.

My parents used to pick a word of the day and then we used it in a sentence. You skipped the washing up if yours was best/funniest

I think an environment where you encourage a love of learning is all round helpful

Agree with the reading, if you're lucky enough to have a local library take them there as often as possible.

Everyone will (and has) said reading…it works for some, not others. DS is an avid reader, it feels like I spend nearly as much on books as my mortgage, his spelling is atrocious (actually that’s harsh, it’s just pretty bad). I think it’s a matter of trial and error with different techniques, I will sometimes point something out and just ask him how to spell it so he can use the methods they teach at school.

I strongly recommend a website called spelling tutor - it teaches through repeated repetition. It really helped my daughter. It costs about £6 a month.

Food shopping, meal plan, shopping list and finding the food in store to add reading you can also incorporate maths it's a 3 in 1 for learning academically, its a huge life skill boosting future independence and its a mundane weekly house task that all grown ups stress about. You can go all out and get recipe books out and get them to fully plan the whole lot and depending on age a budget and an online search to get everything needed from the supermarket to see if the budget fits then go shopping instore your cross over so many skills and they absolutely love that they are in charge of the food that week most surprise you and still do mostly healthy meals if that is their normal way of eating

I'd focus on their maths or vocabulary - spelling is an almost completely unnecessary skill in the digital age.

Get them a library card. Let them borrow books. Let them see you reading. Read together. Good spellers are big readers. Read, copy, cover, write only gets you so far. Then let them use what they’ve read - encourage them to write stories, draw comics, label things.

And (without meaning to sound patronising) let go of the idea that there’s a ‘low effort’ game or app that will enrich your kids’ education. If you want to do it then you need to put the effort in.

You know your children will take exams? Written exams, which will normally decide what form of further education they can access? Those exams (the best chance they have of showing how much they know) are almost always hand written and they are judged on their SPAG.

@Kanaloa

Spelling assessment at GCSE level is minimal. Spelling is a primary school obsession because the curriculum hasn't been updated in decades.