How do you know if your child is a natural speller?

I am a “natural speller.”  I think that just meant I picked up on words easily and rarely misspell (mistyping is another issue altogther LOL).  I was an early reader, and I read anything and everything I could get my hands on.  I took 1st place in our elem school’s spelling bee in both 2nd grade and 5th grade, and 5th place in the school district (5th through 12th grades, I believe) in 5th grade (and would have probably picked up more except we were always on vacation at the cabin whenever spelling bee tryouts rolled around grrrr…).  I guess all that qualifies?    Hope that helps you with your dd!

I’m a naturally skilled speller as is my dd7. We just know by looking at a word whether it is correct or not. I never remembered all the “I before E except after C….” type of rules. (As a grammer gal, I have issues with those “rules” that are not die-hard, consistent rules at all, but rather suggestions for most of the time.). Anyway, as a beginning speller, I just looked at the word and if it didn’t look right, I changed it.

That is how I’m working with my daughter. We have been doing exercises where I give her mulitple choices of words (several, write, reading, scripture, place names… just random words that I know she has seen, or I compile them from a book she recently read) and she picks out the one that is spelled correctly. We also do a “drill” where I give her several commonly misspelled words and she fixes them. She can usually do these type of exercises really well on her own, but I make sure to walk her through as many as I can so she doesn’t feel overwhelmed or pressured. I just want her to have a natural affinity for words, spelling, grammar, etc, so I am trying hard to make it low-key, low-stress. I’ve been using a neat little worksheet book with her called “Very Very Vocabulary” for a year (very very sporadically, I might add) and she really enjoys it.

As far as how I’ll handle those rules with my daughter, I’ll probably touch on them briefly, but won’t require her to memorize them or explain how she knows a particular word is spelled correctly or incorrectly. I realize that she likely just “knows” whether it is right or not.

Bookworm – I also read dictionaries as a kid. Phonebooks, too. Church directories, instruction manuals, encyclopedias, yearbooks… any publication that I thought would reveal a typo! Even as a 10-year-old, I carried a red pen everywhere.

I have something like that going on in myself and find that my 9yo is similar. I can’t say that he spells perfectly everytime but he definitely “spells” by memory rather than any kind of phonics rule. I don’t teach rules either. I just ask if it “looks” right or ask if that’s how they remember seeing it in books, on television (well, that might not work out with all the short cuts), signs, etc. And, I have a horrible tendency to watch for spelling errors or be more focused on the errors than content, especially with my dh. He can tell I’m spell-checking his cards, notes, letters, etc. when I read them and not really reading the content (I am reading them but can’t help myself).

And, I’ll read anything. Shampoo bottles, dogfood bags, game directions…anything.

As I type, I have a dictionary on my lap. Sad, I know, cause that’s pretty exciting to me!

As a side note: I read somewhere, maybe a CM article, that those that read, alot, are just naturally better spellers. They have “seen” the printed word more frequently than those that don’t read as much. That may seem obvious to some of you, but when I read that, I looked at my husband and said, “Aha, we now know what your problem has been your whole life!!” He didn’t think that was very funny, but I thought it revealed a great mystery.

Interesting thread.

I have a very visual memory and spelling was always easy for me. (as well as spelling bees) My hubby thinks it’s a photographic type memory. I can see, for example, a phone number one time and I can usually remember it without looking again. I did enjoy reading as a child although I don’t remember reading a lot, so I’m not sure if that played a part in being a natural speller.

Natural spellers are usually visual learners. Other learners can be early readers too but you’ll know the difference because a visual learner just naturally spells things correctly. I’m a visual learner and half my children are also. The other half take after my husband and are either auditory or kinesthetic learners. You have to work on spelling with them.