Hangman Tips For Kids

My sisters and I could play hangman for great lengths of time. It is a great game for kids to know as it can be played easily in most places, as long as you have paper, pencil and something to rest on.

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The first couple of games, I just watched how the kids guessed the letters to try and work out the words. I then pointed out to our 7 year old that starting with vowels is a good idea:

“There are a few, longer words that have syllables that don’t contain a vowel sound or a vowel letter, but generally every word and every syllable has a vowel sound, which we write with a vowel spelling”. – Alison Clarke www.spelfabet.com

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We talked about how y can sometimes make a vowel sound:

“y” as in “yes” versus “y” as in “by”, “gym”, “baby”, “say”, “they” and “boy”,
– Alison Clarke www.spelfabet.com

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We talked about the length of the word and how the longer the word is, the more likely it is to need more vowels. And with consonants we talked about how some consonants are used more often in words than others and I wrote a couple of commonly used consonants down as an example.

With these few tips both the 7 and 9 year old were able to figured out more of the words and felt more confident in their guesses.

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You can click on the above or download a hangman tip sheet for your kids here – Hangman Tips For Kids.

Hangman iPad Apps

We then tried out a couple of iPad apps for Hangman.  There are numerous, but some are much too hard for younger kids.  The two the kids like best were:
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Hangman Hero Free – has ads and wants to up sell you, but the kids loved the little dance the person does when you guess the word.  Easy enough for them to use and  you can change the setting to easy, normal or hard. It is a free game.

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Preschool 15 in 1 – As the name suggests there are many games to this app, but we have only played with Hangman (found under games). While it says preschooler, the preschooler would need to have a very good knowledge of the sounds of the alphabet.

The game shows pictures for the words and then the child has to guess what the picture is and spell it out. It was way too hard for our preschooler. While it started with showing pictures of a cup and a box, he was later asked to spell words like watch and telephone! But it was good for the 7 year old. This is also a free game.

Do your kids like to play Hangman?

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