Sick of bloody wordsearches

[chaosisawayoflife]

OK, so we've only had 3 so far, but that's 3 too many for me. Dd is in y1 so I have to sit with her while she's doing her homework and these are the most mind-numbing, frustrating and pointless experience for both of us. The one she's working on at the moment has 25 words to find and it's huge. I'm seconds away from opening the wine or doing the bloody thing myself.
Can anyone tell me that these have any educational value that I can console myself with?

It works on their recognition skills, helps them see patterns, reminds them of spelling.
But don't ask me, I used to love doing them when I was 13.

All of the above plus concentration skills...

If it's too difficult I would circle all the initial letters and let her get on with it on her own. If she still can't do it write a note explaining. No biggie.

She's done it. Thank God! She's perfectly capable of doing it but just got bored and distracted after the first few words. I hope that's the last one for a few months!

Hi chaos:

At that age (5/6) sometimes getting them to settle into homework is a real struggle, especially if they don't like something.

If your DD likes colouring, especially fiddly colouring, can I suggest that next time (let's hope there isn't but just in case) - you get out some coloured pencils and have her colour in the word in the word search and on the list.

Both DDs responded better to word searches in KS1 when it seemed like colouring.

The teacher often got the word search back with doodles all over the edges and the back - but the work was done.

Oh

with my DD2 (now Y4) - I scan her word searches or cross words in and race her. She responds well to competition - I just do one or two and then relax and let her win.

I really cannot see anything wrong with extending vocabulary. Why can she not sit and do them? What else will she not want to do? The competition idea is great. Have a bit of fun with it. Sometimes children have to do something they may not want to do.

They have no educational value, are lazy teaching and get binned rather than marked.

Find the unintended anagrams hidden in the text and hand those in instead.

Chippingnortonset123

Re: your no educational value in word searches

I can see at age 10 this may be a fair statement but I do feel there is some method in the madness at age 5.

Not sure what the words were chaosisawayoflife's 5 year old was searching out - but let's presume that they're fairly simple and most likely feature on one of those 100 High Frequency World lists.

So at 5 (Y1) you could be sounding out words still (in fact DD1 was still doing this in Y2).

So looking at a list and maybe seeing bow, slow, snow, etc... or more complicated words - dough, enough, cough, etc... will help work on 'oh' sounds ending 'ow' / or two sounds 'uff' and 'ow' for the ough ending

They may be sounding out individual letters and then looking for them in the grid. And there's pattern recognition - looking for b-o-w (forwards/ backwards/ diagonally).

At 5 (and this is first term Y1) - that seems a reasonable starting point.

I agree that subsequently spellings should become more challenging.

Maybe a crossword with definitions and perhaps one clue solved to get you started - and as you solve the crossword you learn that week's spelling words + their meanings.

maybe a list of words and you're ask to define their meaning as both a noun and a verb.

Maybe a list of words and you're asked to search out their origins (Viking, Roman (Latin), Greek, etc...). Or asking children to find 10 viking words.

Our school used to ask for sentences with the words used within them and we would liven it up by playing a game where we'd try to get all 10 words in one sentence without altering them.

So, on balance, at age five as part of a wider scheme of teaching them letter sounds, blending and basic vocabulary (High Frequency Words) - the word search is a useful tool in a teacher's armory.

I think like anything, in moderation word searches can be a fun way of building skills (letter recognition, pattern recognition, word recognition, sounding out skills, etc...) but probably word search is best used in combination with a number of other 'spelling' related activities.

HTH