Spelling Wisdom / Spalding

Hidden Jewel – I am in the same boat. I use AAS now, but have used SWR in the past. I have found my kids, at least the two oldest think a lot like me and NEED the spelling rules. We find knowing the ~ 70 phonograms and ~ 25 rules to be of great benefit. I like that AAS uses dictation albeit of simple sentences. We have used Spelling Wisdom alongside with success. I do 1-2 SW passages per week at times and we analyze the unknown words using what we know from AAS. It works well. We’re taking a break from SW right now as I’m having some health issues that make me need simple, but I intend to return to doing spelling this way when we start the new school year.

Last year, I spent a term doing only prepared dictation with SW with my oldest. I liked the simplicity, but the fact was she didn’t retain the words as well. She needs to break the words down into phonograms and look at them with spelling rules in mind. Once we used the two together, things went well. I even started writing some practice exercises to go with the SW passages which would be perfect in my book. However, I had to put the project aside for a time. I got the idea from a book called Delightful Dictation by Wiggletoes Press (on lulu.com). We worked through part of that book and it went well. I just decided to add back the AAS bc I like the structured way it goes.

HTH,

Christie