scheduleing for this year

Looks lovely!  Will you do any family read aloud books?  It’s one of my favorite things to do (can be part of history, science, or other).

Well, does your 7 year old read independently yet?  My 6 year old does not, my 7 year old has been reading chapter books since age 3 (taught himself, nothing to do with me!).  So for my 6 year old this year we aren’t doing spelling in any form (spelling wisdom is for 4th grade-ish on up and we don’t do spelling personally until a child has read well for a few years).  He does copywork of letters or of short vowel words (all he can read so far).  We ARE using a phonics program with him – All About Reading.

So I guess, if your 7yo is reading already then I would go with copywork and skip all about spelling.  If they are not reading yet I would go with copywork of letters or words and phrases as they learn to read them.  No spelling.

Does that help?

Your 10yo is probably ready for prepared dictation – which you do with Spelling Wisdom or make up your own.  Here is a great post about the process: http://www.simplycharlottemason.com/blog/a-natural-progression-the-power-of-dictation-part-1/  and there is a second post to go with that one:  http://www.simplycharlottemason.com/blog/growth-in-spelling-the-power-of-dictation-part-2/

In essence, dictation is the next step after copywork.  They study a passage looking at the spelling of words they are unfamiliar with spelling, look at the punctuation, etc.  Then a day or so later, when they are prepared, you read aloud the passage slowly (dictate it) and they write, hopefully with correct spelling and punctuation.  What we have found is that we prefer to take a full week for one passage.  So the first day the kids copy it for copywork.  The next day they find the words they don’t know how to spell and write those/study those.  The third day they copywork it again, paying attention to the spelling words.  Fourth day practice the spelling words and punctuation.  Fifth day I read it aloud and they write.

A key – you only do a sentence or passage that has no more than 3 words they can’t spell.  Any more than that is overwhelming!  So if the early passages in Spelling Wisdom are still to difficult you can write your own sentence for each week.