Word / language games for new readers

Chickpea loved playing Balderdash with my family this summer, but the writing up of a made-up definition is still a bit too hard for her. She can play on a team with an adult, but I’m looking for other word-related games (i.e., games that involve some reading and/or spelling) that might scratch a similar itch, but that she could play independently.

Word/language games we’ve tried so far:

• Boggle: We’ve tried this a few times with a big boggle (5×5 grid). Chickpea looks for 2 to 5 letter words, and the adults look for 5+ words. It works reasonably well. But it doesn’t have the same kind of creative spirit as Balderdash.
• In a Pickle: This game has been a reasonable hit with Chickpea. It requires a certain out of the box thinking that’s vaguely reminiscent of Balderdash. Chickpea can read many of the cards, but many words she still needs help with. It mostly doesn’t affect the game play though. She can just ask us to help her read her cards, and we help her read the cards that we play. Personally I find the gameplay a bit random, but it’s okay as an occasional change of pace. And I do enjoy observing Chickpea’s creativity at work. For example, I tried to argue that a voice is bigger than smoke because you could call through smoke and be heard, but Chickpea countered that if it were really smoky you would probably lose your voice. Another clever play: “Trouble is bigger than a spring because trouble is something and a spring can dry up in summer and then it’s nothing.”
• Fitzit: We just started playing this game. It has a bit less of the creative spirit of Balderdash and In a Pickle, but a slightly more interesting gameplay than In a Pickle. The cards are a mix of easy to read (like “flat”, “beeps”, “has legs” and “can fly”), medium difficulty (“starts with an S”, “emits light”, “used to build something”), and harder to read (like “requires tickets or reservations”, “usually considered unhealthy”, “suitable for a garbage disposal”). I usually try to give Chickpea a pile of cards that are on the easier-to-read side, and she is learning the card’s more commonly used function words (like usually, requires, likely, often,…). But in this game it doesn’t seem so important to keep your cards hidden from the other players, so we just help her read her cards if she gets stuck.  The game itself is quite a bit harder than In a Pickle though. As the cards build up in a row you have to think of an object that satisfies many different properties, and that gets challenging fast. Chickpea is still struggling a bit with the logic of the game, but I think she will enjoy it with a bit more practice.

Other games that we haven’t yet tried, but that look intriguing:

• Apples to Apples (Kid edition): I like the adult version of this game a lot, but haven’t tried the kids version yet. With this game secrecy of the cards is paramount, and I think my daughter won’t yet be able to read many of the cards, so we have put it aside for now. There’s also a “freestyle” version I’ve heard that like Balderdash let’s you write your own cards.
• Articulate / Alias for kids: We don’t own either of these games but Articulate offers a “virtual” card deck available online. The words are not all that easy to read, but I think it could work okay because the opposing team could help her to decipher a word she can’t read herself? It seems that Alias (either the Family or Junior versions) are similar.
• Scattergories: We haven’t tried this one yet. I worry that some of the categories might be not very accessible to kids, but maybe it would work if we came up with our own categories?
• Bananagrams: I have never tried this game, but one online review recommended DOUBLE Bananagrams, since it gives you twice the number of letter tiles.