Tips on teaching a kindergartner to spell?

[Lionessa]

2. We used scrabble, played down a bit to their level, and

changed the rules so that the learners could look up both words for themselves as well as have free challenges to us (adults) where the adults were held to the usual higher standards.

This both helps them repeat spell what they already know, but also go on the hunt for words that start with __ __ __, or whatever. And with using real dictionaries, not on line ones, there would of course be a full page or two of words in front of them every time they opened the dictionary, even if they didn't focus on every word, it none the less exposes them and at that age they retain a lot of peripheral stuff.

Anyway, great game, kids loved the focused parent time, and learned both spelling and definitions.

Edited to add: Playing down to their level simply meant limited words they didn't know, does not mean kindergarten level words. For example if the child knows what spaghetti is, then spaghetti could be used by an adult. If while hunting to see if a hopeful spelling is actually a word, they find some random word that isn't what they were looking for but is a word, then that word would be allowed by children, even if they didn't previously know it was word, but they had to read out loud the definition in order to use a word they hadn't already known.