Skip to main content

Word Tower

How many letters will you need to guess the secret word?

Braille Activity

  • Fine motor skills
  • Literacy
  • Spelling
  • Writing

Level: 1

Number of players: 2 and +

Duration: 10 min

Skills:

  • Read, write words

  • Develop hand and finger strength

  • Make hypotheses

  • Develop motivation to read

Guess the word before you demolish your partner’s tower!

Goals

To practice vocabulary and literacy skills.

The adult prepares

  • 1 alphabet baseplate, sorted into piles of 2 letters

  • 1 blank baseplate

The children play

1

Player 1 thinks of a word, takes the letters to spell it, and writes it on the blank baseplate.

They take the first letter and stack it on the second, take that pile and stack it on the third letter.

At the end, the whole word is in a pile with its first letter on top.

An illustration of two hands holding a vertical stack of nine colorful, chevron-patterned LEGO blocks. The top block is blue with the text 'C3' on it. One speech bubble says 'C like caramel?' referring to a seven-letter word, and the other bubble responds 'No!' indicating that the stack has more blocks than the letters in 'caramel'.

2

Player 2 takes the tower, reads the first letter and guesses the word.

3

If they are wrong, they remove the top brick, read the second letter and try to guess the word again with the 2 letters.

And so on until they have guessed the word.

Teddy plays the activity with his sighted friend Alfie.

There you go Teddy, try and find it out.
So the first letter
is a ‘P’.
Pepperoni, pizza, pancake?
Not quite Teddy!
Try again.
Remember try and keep the top letter brick on.
Oh, an ‘L’.
‘Plimpf’?
Nope.
Try again Teddy.
‘Play’.
No, Teddy.
Try again.
’Plan’?
Not quite.
Very very close though.
An ‘E’.
Do you want a hand there Teddy?
Yes, you take it off.
There you go.
A ‘T’.
Let me reorder it for you Teddy.
So that’s the starting letter.
‘P, L, A, N, E,T’.
Planet ?
Correct!

Facilitation tips

  • Assist players with correct spelling.

  • Explain that tall towers mean long words…

  • Add rules. For example: the first letter must be a consonant, a vowel, or the word must be an adjective.

  • Predetermine the length of words.