Word Games

"Lese? What - no way!"

Click, click, click, Click - Enter and she recited,

"lese
One entry found.

Main Entry: lèse–ma·jes·té
Variant(s): or lese maj·es·ty \ˌlāz-ˈma-jə-stē, ˌlez-, ˌlēz-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French lese majesté, from Latin laesa majestas, literally, injured majesty
Date: 1536
1 a: a crime (as treason) committed against a sovereign power b: an offense violating the dignity of a ruler as the representative of a sovereign power2: a detraction from or affront to dignity or importance"

It may seem unethical to let your children guess on words when playing word games, but I figure if they can prove that it is a word then everything is good. Could I ever get away with assigning them to look up 50 words in a day? While they may comply with my order, they would be bored silly and probably not retain one word, but when they are fighting for points in a game like Boggle,




trust me they will not only look up their words with glee, but they will retain their new additions to crush you in their next game.

I first came by this unorthodox idea when I was playing games like Scramble on Facebook. There were 24 three letter words that I could not find. How was this possible? Frankly, it was possible because I was too stuck in being sure and not guessing or stepping out and trying to learn and expand my vocabulary. I decided that we could all fool around with our language skills and see what nuances of the English language that we could learn. When there are no red pens, it is amazing what you can excavate.

A Game to Play in the Car

As we drove to drop off our food entries at the fair. DS asked what “STC” stood for on a stop sign. I had no idea what he was talking about. I expected to look over and see some kind of graffiti on the sign, but what he was talking about was the tiny little imprint on the very bottom edge of the stop sign. Leave it to DS to notice the smallest possible thing. Something I hadn’t noticed on a stop sign ever. I’m not sure if it was the acronym of the company that made the sign or the department that might authorize the sign, but of course in a homeschooling car, it led to a game of acronyms:

Save the Camel
Sterile Turkeys Captured
Stalking Talking Computers
Sell the Car (see DD’s post about my car)
Stop the Car
Soon to Collide
See the Color
Swerve Toward Chimpanzees
Sweep to Clean
Service to Country
Stop Talking Computer
See Turbo Chameleon
Spend the Cash
Spare the Child
Shoot to Chill (we’ll it should be kill, but we all know that is not nice)
Spend Time Carefully
Savor the Candy
Sink the Canoe
Sift the cranium
Shake The Caboose
Swim to Canada
Shuck the Corn (which pathetically started as Suck the Corn, but we decided Shuck might be a better word choice)
Service Tall Candles
Supply Treasured cookbooks
Sing Traditional Carols
Silly Trained Chimpanzee


One of them was “Stop Talking C”. DD did not appreciate that very much and was bummed that no one else had an initial that she could use in an acronym.
This is a great silly game that can be played with any letters you might find and is a great way to work on synonyms, adjective, and brainstorming.

Let us know if you come up with any that are really funny.