I picked up Upwords on a whim from the thrift store. I’d heard of it, and that it was good, but that was it. Especially if you don’t have any other spelling games, Upwords is a total win!

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The first thing we did was I had my husband cut down the board. The board it comes with has a bit of a skirt, so it’s elevated off the table, but this just makes storage problematic. By the time we got this game, our shelves were already overflowing, so I needed the board to be flatter.

Oh, but that board! I LOVE that the tiles lock in place. I’m quite the perfectionist, myself, and I hate it when a board gets bumped (which let’s face it, happens all too often when you’re playing with kids) and things get moved. I actually saw a Scrabble board that allows the tiles to lock in place, but my copy doesn’t have this feature.

Another cool part of this game is how you can stack the letters. I think this would be awesome when to use when teaching a child how to read. We spent a lot of time with books like Mouse Makes Words, working with word families, and replacing one letter with another to make a new word. This game is another way to explore this idea.

After taking pictures of Upwords, I left the game out on our table, and was not disappointed at the engagement that followed! I showed my daughter how to build and create words, then my husband started creating sentences. Not the intended use of the game, but still great spelling practice as the kids delighted in changing his sentences.