Fun Activities: Let’s Play Squabble!

This is a really fun game that G1’s trainer at myBrainLab taught him after his brain training session one day. It’s called Squabble and it is basically a sort of modified Scrabble. G1’s absolutely mad about this game so I thought I would share it. It’s also a really fun way to increase vocabulary and improve on spelling.

What do you need?

• A set of Scrabble tiles or similar

If you don’t, you can still make your own using the Scrabble tile distribution of letters and points:

• 1 point: E ×12, A ×9, I ×9, O ×8, N ×6, R ×6, T ×6, L ×4, S ×4, U ×4
• 2 points: D ×4, G ×3
• 3 points: B ×2, C ×2, M ×2, P ×2
• 4 points: F ×2, H ×2, V ×2, W ×2, Y ×2
• 5 points: K ×1
• 8 points: J ×1, X ×1
• 10 points: Q ×1, Z ×1

Download the template from Fuzzimo: (Click the link and visit their website to get the zip file)

How do you play Squabble?

The rules are simple:

1. Put all the tiles face down on the table or into a bag.
2. Each person takes turns to open a letter and place it at the center of the table.
3. The first person to spot a word in the jumble of letters has to call it out and take the letters for that word and place it in front of him.
4. The game continues until someone else identifies a word from the jumble of letters.
5. Stealing words: you can steal letters from your opponent by rearranging the letters to make a new word. For instance, “rule” can be turned into “lure”.
6. Stealing words: You can also add letters to a word from your opponent to make a new word. For instance, “rule” can be turned into “ruler” by adding the letter “r” from the center pool of letters.
7. Stealing words: You can also add letters and rearrange a word from your opponent to make a new word. For instance, “rat” can be turned into “target” by rearranging the letters and adding the letters “g, e, t” from the center pool of letters.
8. You must call out the word before you take any letters.
9. Once a word has been used, it cannot be reused for the duration of that game.
10. This continues until there are no more letters and no one can think of any more words to be made from the letters available.
11. The points are adding up based on the letter score of each letter. The person with the most points wins the game.

The real fun in this game is stealing words from your opponent.