This is one of the earliest “puzzles” a child can do. It doesn’t require any writing skills or knowledge of alphabet letters. It’s a variation on the famous Crosswords puzzles, but using syllables, and keeping it simple by explaining it in multiple stages. This allows very young Apprentices—without reading skills yet—to learn about syllables in a fun and engaging way.
How does it work?
- Words to fill in are given by images. You don’t write but place big tokens on the paper.
- You get two kinds of tokens to physically place: regular ones and special ones. They have a specific syllable written on them that a Guardian might need to read out loud.
- Every puzzle has one (or more) of these “special syllables”: they appear multiple times in different words.
- For example, BASKETBALL and FOOTBALL share the syllable “BALL”.
- Those words will probably cross over and you can only solve the puzzle if you place that special token there.
- You simply need to place these tokens correctly in the empty squares! (Correctly identifying how many syllables a word has, and which of them is the same as the syllable inside another word.)
The first puzzles are really small, with short words and only one “crossover”. They are, as usual, just to explain how it works. Later puzzles become larger and more challenging. If you can solve the final puzzles (which can also be done with a pen), you can be certain you’re a master of syllables!
Once a child knows the letters of the alphabet, they can continue to the advanced version: Crossyllabi Reader. It’s about writing/placing the actual syllable letters in all the empty squares.
Continue Exploring
Exhausted this resource? Below is a list of all resources (in this and other factions) around this same topic.
Product Contents
Below is a summary of this product's contents. The actual product might have even more inside, but never less.
- Puzzle Rules Explainer (text for Guardian; images for Apprentice)
- Token Cut-Out Sheet
- 14 Crossyllabi Puzzles