Vocabulary practice with a twist
A crossword makes children recall a word from its meaning and spell it exactly, letter by letter, to fit the squares.More puzzles
See the word search maker and, for pre-readers, the picture crossword in picture puzzles.Provincial curriculum links
- BC Grade 2–3Word patterns and word families, and most conventions of Canadian spelling.
- BC Grade 3Word knowledge grows to include roots, prefixes and suffixes.
- ON Grade 1–3Spelling and word reading are taught explicitly in the Foundations of Language strand (2023).
Crosswords aren’t named in either curriculum, but they make students recall a word from its meaning and spell it exactly. That works well beyond Language: Social Studies terms, science vocabulary, or the provinces and territories and their capitals.
Use Canadian spellings in the answers (colour, centre, neighbour) so the grid matches the spelling students see in class. For older students, a crossword built from words that share a root or a suffix, such as help, helpful and helpless, supports the word knowledge BC describes in Grade 3.
Summarized in our own words from BC English Language Arts (Grades 2–3) and The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language (2023).
