How to use this page: do 5-15 words a day depending on grade, say and write each word, then revisit after 1 day, 3 days and 1 week. Words are practice words, not official Scripps lists.
About the grade levels: the grade groupings are practice groupings by word length, spelling pattern and difficulty. They are not an official standard, and this site is not affiliated with the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Jump to: Grade 1 · Grade 2 · Grade 3 · Grade 4 · Grade 5 · Grade 6 · Grade 7 · Grade 8
1st Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 1 starts with CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, then adds digraphs (sh, ch, th), simple blends (st, fr, dr) and a few common vowel patterns. Ask the child to name the vowel sound first.
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cat | dog | sun | hat | red |
| run | mom | dad | big | cup |
| pig | top | fish | bed | map |
| nap | sip | mud | bud | zip |
| leg | ten | vet | fig | log |
| hug | rub | den | bag | bus |
| hop | mix | fox | pet | wet |
| jam | ham | yes | win | pin |
| pan | can | fan | van | tap |
| lap | cap | gap | rat | bat |
| mat | sat | pad | sad | lad |
| had | dip | hit | sit | fit |
| kit | lip | tip | rip | hot |
| pot | dot | cot | got | job |
| rob | box | fun | bun | gun |
| nut | cut | hut | jug | bug |
| rug | tug | mug | sock | duck |
| ship | chip | shop | chin | that |
| this | them | with | when | what |
| play | stop | frog | drum | flag |
| crab | swim | milk | jump | book |
| ball | home | like | good | down |
| blue | bear | warm | fast | tree |
| nest | lamp | tent | bell | hill |
| pond | sand | wind | gift | desk |
| king | ring | song | wing |
2nd Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 2 adds vowel teams (ai, oa, ou), double consonants in the middle of words (rabbit, button) and two-syllable words. Clap syllables before spelling.
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| garden | paper | yellow | basket | window |
| turtle | pencil | family | cookie | mountain |
| purple | rabbit | sister | winter | |
| brother | flower | music | hungry | teacher |
| orange | finger | animal | summer | friend |
| button | kitten | lesson | sudden | cabin |
| frozen | cotton | broken | spoken | stolen |
| chosen | driven | given | seven | open |
| taken | blanket | carpet | jacket | market |
| planet | rainbow | butterfly | breakfast | triangle |
| zipper | whisper | cupcake | dinosaur | monkey |
| donkey | pillow | ladder | candle | puzzle |
| bubble | table | apple | little | middle |
| riddle | giggle | jungle | castle | simple |
| gentle | tickle | rain | train | snail |
| paint | coast | boat | road | toast |
| float | cloud | house | mouse | sound |
| ground | round | shout | mouth | clown |
| brown | crown | towel | flour | river |
| dinner | supper | number | picture | thunder |
| coffee | carrot | pepper | pretty | sleepy |
| happy | sunny | funny | bunny |
3rd Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 3 introduces silent letters (kn, wr, mb), -ough/-augh families and irregular words. Teach silent-letter pairs as patterns, not one word at a time.
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bicycle | calendar | chocolate | elephant | umbrella |
| library | hospital | sandwich | suitcase | cereal |
| fortune | jellyfish | capture | journey | canyon |
| contest | laughter | favorite | energy | problem |
| pirate | knight | honest | island | wrapper |
| knife | gnome | wreck | thumb | climb |
| comb | doubt | debt | receipt | muscle |
| written | rhythm | scene | science | answer |
| column | solemn | foreign | Wednesday | February |
| ceiling | believe | field | brief | chief |
| niece | achieve | shield | receive | grief |
| kitchen | afraid | children | quarter | between |
| always | perhaps | balloon | mystery | adventure |
| kangaroo | crocodile | dolphin | penguin | giraffe |
| vegetable | beautiful | neighbor | weigh | eight |
| sleigh | height | daughter | caught | thought |
| bought | brought | naughty | enough | cough |
| rough | tough | laugh | knock | kneel |
| wrist | wrinkle | wrong | whistle | listen |
| fasten | raccoon | squirrel | orchestra | pajamas |
| lightning | tomorrow | yesterday | cousin |
4th Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 4 begins Latin roots: port (carry), rupt (break), dict (say), aud (hear), vis (see), scrib/script (write). One root unlocks many words.
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| architect | brilliant | courage | decision | echo |
| fossil | grammar | horizon | insect | jealous |
| kingdom | lantern | migrate | nervous | observe |
| parade | rescue | schedule | treasure | unusual |
| volcano | warning | yogurt | benevolent | portable |
| dictate | transport | export | import | rupture |
| interrupt | erupt | corrupt | predict | contradict |
| verdict | audible | audience | auditorium | visible |
| vision | revise | supervise | scribble | describe |
| inscribe | manuscript | scripture | knowledge | impossible |
| disagree | friendship | powerful | darkness | careful |
| handful | government | environment | equipment | adjective |
| awkward | bargain | calculate | celebrate | challenge |
| community | condition | conclusion | curious | customer |
| delicate | develop | disaster | discover | earthquake |
| electricity | exercise | experience | explore | frequent |
| guardian | imagine | invention | mysterious | necessary |
| ordinary | peculiar | permission | pioneer | vocabulary |
| suspicious | technology | temperature | tremendous | weather |
5th Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 5 adds French loanwords (bouquet, depot, plateau) and Greek combining forms (tele, micro, chron). Ask: what language is this from?
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| appreciate | camouflage | delicious | enthusiastic | fragment |
| genuine | hesitate | invisible | kaleidoscope | literature |
| marvelous | negotiate | outrageous | participate | quantity |
| recommend | signature | tournament | unanimous | valuable |
| wanderer | xylophone | youthful | zoology | alignment |
| antique | bouquet | brochure | bureau | critique |
| debris | depot | etiquette | grotesque | naive |
| plateau | prestige | regime | reservoir | routine |
| silhouette | souvenir | technique | terrain | unique |
| chronic | synchronize | chronicle | telescope | microscope |
| photograph | telephone | biography | geography | phonics |
| asteroid | synonym | antonym | ballet | genre |
| croissant | buffet | accomplish | acknowledge | ambitious |
| anonymous | apologize | atmosphere | boulevard | category |
| cemetery | commemorate | companion | competition | conscience |
| consequence | controversy | convenient | courageous | dependable |
| desperate | determine | disastrous | eloquent | embarrass |
| enormous | exhausted | fascinate | generation | hygiene |
| identical | independent | jewelry | leisure | mischievous |
| mortgage | opportunity | pamphlet | pneumonia |
6th Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 6 stresses academic vocabulary, Greek forms (bio, geo, meter, phon, graph) and doubled-consonant traps (occurrence, accommodate).
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| acquisition | catastrophe | dilemma | equilibrium | fluctuate |
| guarantee | hypothesis | irrelevant | jurisdiction | luminous |
| maneuver | notorious | omniscient | pessimistic | quarantine |
| significant | terminology | unprecedented | versatile | warrant |
| xenophobia | zealous | bibliography | biology | geology |
| geometry | thermometer | barometer | perimeter | diameter |
| microphone | symphony | euphony | cacophony | autograph |
| paragraph | telegraph | calligraphy | philanthropy | misanthropy |
| anthropology | archaeology | psychology | occurrence | accommodate |
| exaggerate | committee | aggressive | efficient | occasionally |
| patience | existence | evidence | substance | essence |
| sequence | assistance | independence | eloquence | abbreviate |
| absence | adequate | advantageous | aerodynamic | ambassador |
| analyze | anxiety | apparatus | appearance | architecture |
| arrangement | assignment | attitude | authentic | bureaucratic |
| camaraderie | characteristic | cholesterol | colossal | conscientiously |
| consensus | coincidence | correspondence | deceive | discipline |
| dissatisfied | emphasize | enthusiasm | exhilarate | fluorescent |
7th Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 7 words often defeat phonics: liaison, rendezvous, bureaucracy. Use language of origin as the main decoding strategy.
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| abominable | bureaucracy | conscientious | hierarchy | illustrious |
| jeopardy | liaison | nostalgia | oscillate | picturesque |
| quintessential | threshold | vengeance | whimsical | xenophobic |
| yield | zeppelin | acquiesce | ambiguous | ambivalent |
| anachronism | anomalous | belligerent | cacophonous | circumspect |
| clandestine | coalesce | convoluted | corroborate | deleterious |
| diaphanous | dichotomy | disseminate | ebullient | egregious |
| ephemeral | equivocate | evanescent | exacerbate | fastidious |
| garrulous | idiosyncrasy | metamorphosis | phenomenon | philosophy |
| democracy | aristocracy | metaphor | entrepreneur | connoisseur |
| lieutenant | surveillance | rendezvous | chauffeur | chrysanthemum |
| questionnaire | miscellaneous | labyrinthine | mellifluous | onomatopoeia |
| soliloquy | ubiquitous | sycophant | magnanimous | nefarious |
| obstreperous | pandemonium | paradigm | paraphernalia | pecuniary |
| pernicious | perfunctory | acrimony | altruism | amorphous |
| apprehensive | auspicious | bewilder | bourgeois | cantankerous |
| chameleon | conglomerate | connotation | dexterity | discrepancy |
| eccentric | ennui | entourage | facetious | fallible |
| gratuitous | hallucination |
8th Grade Spelling Bee Words
Grade 8 words mirror upper-level competition. In Scripps-style bees, spellers can usually ask for definition, part of speech, language of origin, sentence and alternate pronunciation; confirm the current rules at spellingbee.com.
| Word | Word | Word | Word | Word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| effervescent | fallacious | grandiloquent | hyperbole | juxtaposition |
| kaleidoscopic | lackadaisical | perspicacious | rambunctious | scintillating |
| truculent | unscrupulous | verisimilitude | wunderkind | xenophile |
| ziggurat | abstemious | acrimonious | adventitious | aegis |
| aggrandize | alacrity | ameliorate | anachronistic | anathema |
| antediluvian | apocryphal | approbation | arcane | ascetic |
| assiduously | bathysphere | beatific | beleaguer | benediction |
| blandishment | calumniate | capricious | captious | castigate |
| defenestration | prestidigitation | tergiversation | autochthonous | cymotrichous |
| logorrhea | pulchritudinous | sesquipedalian | magniloquent | logodaedaly |
| ephebiatrics | obsequious | ostentatious | parsimonious | penultimate |
| perfidious | phlegmatic | plethora | precocious | quixotic |
| recalcitrant | sanguine | serendipity | sacrilegious | surreptitious |
| taciturn | trepidation | vicissitude | vociferous | zephyr |
| cognoscenti | concatenate | conundrum | desultory | diatribe |
| ebullience | epitome | erudite | esoteric | extemporaneous |
| fractious | gregarious | harbinger | iconoclast | impecunious |
| inchoate | ineffable | insidious | intransigent | lugubrious |
| mendacious | nonchalant |
How to Practice Spelling Bee Words
- ➥ Group words by pattern or root instead of studying random lists.
- ➥ Ask for language of origin before spelling any hard word.
- ➥ Run a timed mini-bee once a week to practice spelling under pressure. For a relaxed, game-style warm-up, try Spelling Bee Unlimited.
- ➥ Check definitions and etymology in Merriam-Webster.
Looking for the seven-letter word puzzle instead? Play the Daily Spelling Bee Game, check the spelling bee hints, or enter your letters in the spelling bee solver.
Last updated: October 2, 2026
