Spelling

My dd struggles with spelling.  We are using Sequential Spelling this year and I keep giving her words she misses until she gets them right.  Apparently she learned to read too fast and too early and does not use much phonics or slow down enough to sound out the word.  This is helping her slow down and see the parts of the words, as the spelling lists are taught by word family.  They use visual, audio and kinesthetic learning methods.  There is a free sample on their website I tried before I purchased, and it is only $10-$12, non-consumable.  We use a plain lined notebook with it.  There was a post by a user on here back in August that lead us to try it.

I love the vintage books at Google books.  Currently I am using the New World Speller by Julia Helen Wohlfarth and Lillian Emily Rogers  circa 1920. I think it’s wonderful!  Since this is my 22nd year of homeschooling I’ve seen many spelling curriculums and I find it interesting to notice that bits and pieces of them have been taken from some of these vintage books.

I also use vintage books for dictation.  My favorite is The Modern Speller by Kate Van Wangeren.  It’s divided into years, which are then divided by semesters.  I choose a level for each child, download it, print and bind it, so that they have a complete copywork/dictation book for the cost of printing.

The selections are just the right length and usually encourage good character traits or noble virtues.  Many selections are from classic literature and poetry.  Words that might cause a spelling problem are set apart to be noted and practiced.  Occasionally some archaic language or idea is included and we either just talk about it or skip that selection.

There is a veritable gold mine to be found in free vintage books in my opinion.

I’m searching for a spelling program, too.  I’m not liking the CLE Lang. Arts spelling (it’s right in the LA curriculum) because too many of the words seem pulled out of thin air.  I’d prefer something “phonics-rule-based”, I think.

Sequential Spelling isn’t’ working because it seems hard to get my daughter on the computer  (because my husband needs it or I need it) and the lady saying the words on the DVD has a twang – pin=pen, that sort of thing and it drives my daughter nuts!  *L*

So, I’m following this thread!

We are borrowing the DVD (thankfully!) so there might be a newer one that’s better……a few years ago we tried me giving her the words and it seemed like it kept getting pushed off and then it ended up that in 180 days of school we only did about 40 spelling lessons.

Perhaps I should think seriously about trying again…..

I’m VERY interested in the vintage Dictation Day by Day A Modern Speller. But I can’t seem to find level 2 on Google only combined with year 3 on Amazon. It’s kind of confusing…… I did find year 3 on google so I’m going to try to print that…. we’ll see – some of these on line freebies really trip me up for saving and printing LOL

jeaninpa – if you have any more info on these – I would SO appreciate it!! Thanks for the idea!!!

Thank you! I opened the link and I can see it but I can’t figure out how to print it. Ugh. I really think this would help my 4th grader to be successful at spelling. We do random dictation right now and there is no consistency in word progression.

Should I be able to print it from Google’s page, do you think?

If you go to the book that you want at Google Play and save it to your books/library, you should be able to see the book title and author in a small box.  You should see three vertical dots on the right hand side of the picture of the book.  When you click on those dots, it gives you the option of downloading the pdf.  After you download the pdf to your computer, you should be able to print.  Let me know if that works.