Short Words

This is a challenging game students often enjoy. Write the numbers 1-10 vertically on the board. Then, next to each number, write two letters. For example:



Team 1 Team 2

1. oo
2. ea
3. tt
4. an
5. pl
6. ts
7. in
8. sm
9. oy
10. ch


The letter pairs are used to make words. Words can built on either side of a letter pair, but the base letter may not be separated. Thus, for EA, either SEA or EAT is acceptable, for TT, MUTT or LETTER, but not TOT. For each letter of a word, score one point. Here's the kicker: the lowest score wins. Thus, students must think of the shortest words possible. For beginning classes, it is advisable to use mostly vowel-vowel or vowel-consonant combinations. For more advanced classes consonant-consonant combinations are more challenging.