Scottish Friendly Letterfall - Including Winner Update

When you have children in your house, a lot of your time is spent helping with spelling and teaching them to read, from pre school to reception to the more complex secondary school projects. Starting with the smaller, simpler words and gradually moving on to learn the bigger more complex ones can be very rewarding, but do you ever wonder how many words you actually know?

Scottish Friendlyhave come up with an addictive and yet educational competition with the chance to win a prize of £100 per country or a grand prize of £500. Once on their website you simply choose your country and then try and spell as many words as you can from the letters that fall down.

It’s like a fast paced Scrabble crossed with Tetris, I have to admit that I’m not the best at it and my highest score so far is 501, considering the highest for Britain is currently in the high 20000’s I think I have a way to go.

So what is all this about? The Scottish Book Trust have brought together some renowned International and UK authors to schools and libraries across the country and, together with Scottish Friendly, have created the Letterfall UK Championship. The aim being to encourage children’s literacy with a game that children and their parents can play together and test their word skills at the same time.

Today so many people have forgotten how important literacy is, with the introduction of mobile phones and text messages so much of our basic day to day use of the English language is governed by a need for quick messages.

So what are you waiting for, why not pitch your skills against each other and lots of people around the country, head over to the Letterfall website now to take part and add your score to the growing board.

This addictive game is now over, here are some of the statistics and the winner...

Statistics 

Games Played by Territory:

Territory	Games Played	Number of Contestants
England	865	121
Scotland	306	32
Wales	140	17
Northern Ireland	258	11

Most Interesting Words in the Final:

Word	Points
BRAMBLINGS	190
HORSEPLAY	180
HOGSHEAD	128
EXCULPATE	207
SAWHORSES	135
AIRPOWER	104
JIMMIED	119

The Winner, Nichola Leaver, age 20, has been named the country’s leading wordsmith after winning a national online word competition.

Ms Leaver competed in the ‘Letterfall Championship 2014’, run by ISA provider Scottish Friendly. The competition saw hundreds of people from all over the country compete at playing the popular online, Scrabble®-inspired word game, Letterfall.

The competition ran over two months with Ms Leaver, who hails from Wrexham and studies in Chester, winning the regional championship for Wales.  In the UK Final she finished the tournament in top spot having used words such as ‘quivered’, ‘cuticles’ and ‘flounder’ to arrive at an impressive score of 62,414 – more than 13,000 points clear of her nearest rival. 

Ms Leaver commented: “I’ve always loved word games but to be honest, I never thought I was going to win. Letterfall is an easy game to play, but when the pressure is on, especially when you are closing in on the top score, it did get a little nerve-racking.”

NB: This is a sponsored post which has been written in association with Scottish Friendly

Miniland Educational Toy Review

My son has been off from nursery during the holidays for a break before he starts school and I have still wanted to keep him counting and busy with educational activities so he doesn't forget what it's like.

So I was grateful when we were sent some educational toys from DKL Toys to review, they are made by Miniland Educational and as soon as I had opened the package my son was excited. The bright and fun packaging appealed to him and it was a difficult choice which to open first.

We went with the sewing templates first, the box contains 3 thick plastic animal silhouettes, six different characters to sew onto them and then 9 different laces for sewing with.

The finished product!

The thick plastic means that they can be used time and time again, so far the paper silhouettes have lasted without becoming damaged and having two of each character gives the child choice and means they can do it again with a different character.
The characters are engaging and sewing the brightly coloured shoes laces through the holes helps with fine motor skills, perfect for helping with my sons writing skills.

The second toy is counting hands, the toy comes with six cards which have different hands on (left and right) and different numbers of fingers on them, using the cards the aim is for the child to find the hands with the right number on and thread them onto the string, counting as they go.

Whilst this was a really great for teaching my son to count and look how to spot the different hands etc there was a little confusion as to what to do as no instructions came with it and there weren't enough of the hands to match the cards.

Card says for four right hands but there are only two of each?!?

I think if we disregarded the cards and just got on with counting etc it would have been OK but I'm not really sure whether we are using it right or not! It certainly confused my son who spent several frustrated minutes looking for the right hands to match the card!

However, the hands and laces are of good quality and have withstood some prodding and swinging around on the end of the string.

You can find a full list of stockists of this range at DKL Toys or they are available from Miniland on Amazon currently £9.50 for the animal characters and £9.45 for the counting hands.

Disclosure: We were sent these items to review by DKL Toys, all opinions are my own.