As an experienced babysitter, nanny, tutor, substitute teacher and aunt, I am always looking for fun games and activities to sharpen mental skills. I have been using this game with an elderly person with dementia, and it has helped him focus, exercised his language muscles (including spelling as well as word recognition and retrieval abilities), gotten him thinking about options, given him a way to interact with other people, and kept his mind off negative thoughts. The instructions provide a couple of versions for regular competitive play which are fun for kids of similar skill levels, the idea always being to form more words than your opponents do by placing single letter cards in front of word ending cards. It was easy to adapt play for his needs and abilities. Speed, multiple piles to choose from, and simultaneous play of multiple people, while exciting for kids, would be utterly confusing for him, but these simpler variations work just fine. For solo play he has one draw pile and keeps up to 3 cards in his hand. If he has to discard, I just tuck the discards into the bottom of the draw pile to avoid confusion. I collect the words he forms and set them aside and then turn over a new word ending card for him while he draws a replacement card for his hand. When he sees the words spread out on the table, he feels good about how well he's doing. I just sort the used cards periodically and shuffle them, adding them to the draw piles if I want to extend the playing time. In order for him to play with the grandchildren, we just have one ending card in middle of play area, one draw pile and one discard pile, and they take turns. If someone can make a word, they collect the word and turn over a new word ending card and play passes to next player. If they can't make a word, they discard and draw a new card and their turn is over. I think these adaptations would work well with special needs students, too, and I think it would be easy for other people to come up with their own variations. In all versions, you have to decide whether any of the letters you have can spell a legitimate word with the available ending card (or cards), and if you have several possibilities, you get to practice choosing among options. Reinforces phonics, reading and spelling skills.
