The Longest Word

Build a big word for a big win!

It’s a letter puzzle. Find the longest word and win the game.

Goals

To develop vocabulary and word understanding.

The adult prepares

2 alphabet baseplates
1 bowl with all the other letter bricks

Give an alphabet baseplate (with 2 of each letter) to each player.

The children play

Player 1 takes a brick from the bowl and reads out the letter.

Both players find that letter on their baseplate and move it to the bottom.

After taking turns picking letters from the bowl, both players have the same 8 letters at the bottom of their baseplate.

To win the game, they have to spell the longest word they can using only those letters.

In this video, 13-year old Niahm and Amirah move their bricks to find a word, but some children may prefer to perform the activity mentally and won’t need to write the word.

Oh, it is a ‘H’.
A ‘U’.
‘E’!
Thats a good one if you’re making long words.
It’s an ‘N’.
‘M’.
-‘D’.
We have six letters.
-’T’.
We’ve got lots of consonants,
so it’s not very good.
Okay, an ‘A’.
Oh, nice.
Now you have thirty seconds to find the longest word.
So tell how many letters
there are in your word,
each of you.
-Five.
Oh, yours is longer, I’ve got four.
What is the word?
-’Human’.
I have ‘math’!
I couldn’t think of anything longer than human
That came to me straight away
I went, ‘oh, human’, that was like
everything I could think of.