Spelling Woes

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  • February 24, 2009 at 3:58 pm
    materursa
    Member

    I am currently trying to decide on a spelling program to use with my dd. I’ve narrowed it down to Spelling Wisdom or Queen Homeschool’s Learning Spelling Through Copywork. I should mention that we are just starting to transition to more CM methods of homeschooling. I really like the classic literature dictation method used in Spelling Wisdom, and it seems to be more in line with what CM encouraged. However LSTC still has some copywork components, and the idea of teaching spelling rules sounds like it would be helpful. I was hoping that I might get some thoughts from some others on this issue.

    Thanks so much!

    Amanda

    February 24, 2009 at 4:39 pm
    knechtslodge
    Participant

    I have used both Spelling Wisdom and Spelling Through Copywork. To me the difference was where you child is with their spelling. My dd (9 yr) was having a tremendous amount of trouble with spelling. Spelling Wisdom was too much for her in the beginning so we switched to Spelling Through Copywork and are about to finish the first book and have already ordered the second book to start next week. Spelling Through Copywork has really helped her. We are currently using Spelling Wisdom as our cursive work. She is copying the passages into cursive. When she gets a little more confident in her spelling we will switch back to Spelling Wisdom. Hope this helps.

    February 24, 2009 at 5:07 pm
    baileymom
    Member

    Just a little thought on spelling rules…right now, we’re using Spelling Power with my dds 12 and 9, and they don’t seem to benefit at all from learning the rule (which they are supposed to write before each new list).The rule seems to change so much even within itself…like today’s was /or/ can be spelled or like nor, oor like door, oar like boar…

    Honestly, I’ve been thinking about dropping it and using our dictation and copywork as our main spelling (and adding in mispelled words from their writing).

    Just my .02

    Kathi

    February 24, 2009 at 6:33 pm
    richpond
    Participant

    I am also thinking about buying Spelling Wisdom.

    I have the Queens spelling through copywork B. For my ds8 it seemed like busywork. And if he was going to spend time copying I would rather him copy scripture or things of value not just a group of words. I also didn’t like the sentence structure of the practice sentences. For example, “You are a fool if you put your food by the horse’s hooves!” This was week three “oo” rules. My son never really got the spelling rule..it was just a list of words that he already knew how to read so he didn’t care if “oo” can make both the short “u” and the long “u” sound.

    I don’t mean to be negative..because I like the other copywork from Queens but IMO I think Spelling Wisdom will work better at least for us.

    Hope this helps.

    Shelly

    February 24, 2009 at 7:45 pm
    materursa
    Member

    Thank you for your responses! The things you all have said make sense. I’m still trying to let go of the “conventional” type of curriculum.

    Thanks again!

    Amanda

    February 24, 2009 at 8:01 pm
    Misty
    Participant

    I just thought I’d let you know what we have been doing for spelling.

    1st I say that although spelling is important I think that the reading the kids do will help them as much as any “curriculum” I could buy them.

    That said we use IEW’s Phonetic Zoo. My kids really like this better than anything I have ever tried. I love it cause they do it on there own and I don’t have to do anything but re-check there corrections.

    With this program they listen to a CD that teaches a jingle about the words they are going to be working on and then they say the word, use it in a sentence and re-say the word. They get 15 like this and ever 5 they re-say the jingle. Then they corrected it from the CD also, they spell the words for them to correct. The idea with this is that they continue ever day to do the lesson until they can do it 2 times with none wrong. Don’t matter if they master it in 3 days or 30 days. I have found this to be less stressful for my slow speller and a great bonus for my quick spellers.

    Just wanted to let you know what we use.

    Misty

    February 24, 2009 at 8:38 pm
    Rene
    Participant

    I tried the free sample of Queen’s spelling program but it’s been a couple of years ago. I’ve recently purchased Spelling Wisdom and we love it! I got book one, because my 11yo daughter, who learned to read about age 9, has horrible spelling with simple words that she reads everyday – like she writes “thay” for they, and “than” for then.

    I like the whole concept of Spelling Wisdom, having her visualize the words and it’s in the context of something meaningful – not just an arbitrary list of words. In lesson 1 she didn’t know the word “ought” – she studied it last Friday, and then again yesterday, then I dictated it to her and she got it all right, punctuation and everything. Then this morning at breakfast she was verbally spelling “ought” for us all. 🙂

    Before getting SW we were doing Rod and Staff spelling, which I was wanting because of all the rules – but she was having tons of trouble with the lessons, and when I’d read through them even I got frustrated. I thought “I don’t use these rules to spell, I just know what the words look like.”

    Today for school I gave her lesson 2 and just had her look it over. She closed her eyes and spelled each word out loud and had a problem with one of them, so that one she is thinking on until her dictation time.

    So I vote Spelling Wisdom. 🙂

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