This is how we use it (Book 1). My dd is a little younger than the recommended age, but she LOVES spelling and this is a good fit for her already. I mention that she’s younger because we also use it in a very relaxed manner because of that. 🙂 (Though I imagine this is how we will use it indefinitely.)
Early in the week I give her a print out of the dictation for the week (straight from the book). I run that back through the printer and add lines to the bottom of it (from a document I’ve made to fit the space) so she can copy the sentence if she’d like—-or just the words she doesn’t know how to spell. I leave that up to her because she also does copywork on different days. If a word is “tricky” for her, we may practice spelling it orally together (she often spells orally without the letter reversals that she sometimes does when writing i.e. Jakcie instead of Jackie).
Then when she tells me she is ready to write from my dictation, we do that. We’ve only done I think 4 or 5 exercises so far, but sometimes she has done the dictation the next day and sometimes a few days later.
The prep I do is printing out the page from the book (I bought the ebook version) and adding the lines…..and that’s it. Then I work with her if needed/desired. She often wants to practice memorizing the word(s) she doesn’t know on her own.
I can see that I might work in other discussion about letter/spelling patterns at some point in the future, but so far we’ve not done anything like that.
So far we’ve spent about 5 minutes or less reviewing the exercise together when I give it to her and about 5 minutes doing the final dictation……and she has done the “studying” of words on her own by choice.
My daughter is 11 1/2 and we are using Book 1. She was a late reader and has been a horrible speller. So I started with the first book. I bought the ebook, printed the whole thing and bound it with my comb binder.
I hand dd the whole book and have her read the lesson passage and take note of any words she does not know. Usually only 1 or 2 words. She will visualize the word, study the word, spell it to herself, etc. This only takes about 5 minutes. Then next day she looks at the passage again, and if she feels ready I dictate to her. By the third day she is starting the next lesson – so we generally do about 2 lessons a week.
She is loving this way of learning spelling and will often come up to me and just spell out loud one of the words she has learned this way.
We were doing rod and staff spelling and the lessons were taking her 1 1/2 hours each day – many of the “spelling rules” I had not ever even learned and trying to help her understand the lesson was causing much frustration for me. LOL
I do like Kim’s idea of reprinting the page with lines for copywork. I might do that with my soon-to-be 9 yo dd who is on the brink of learning to read.
Does anyone here use it as their copywork selection for that week? I heard Sonya mention this on the SCM DVD and I was planning to do this, does it work?
I hope it works because that is what I am planning on doing. I plan on giving my son the book on Mon. have him copy the motto, sentence or whatever it is for that day. And then have him study it throughout the week. Then dictate it to him when he thinks he’s got it.
For the rest of the week, ds’s copywork will come from Queen’s copywork books Copywork for Little Boys…of which my son detests the name and says “It should say for BIG Boys” 🙂
Well then, I guess we’ll be testing that out together this year! I planned on giving it to him on Monday and then doing the dictation on Friday. Will you do the dictation whenever he is ready and then fill in for the rest of the week with Queens until you hit a Monday again?
I’m sorry I didn’t see this post until today..sorry so late. I am planning on average to do two lessons a week. Copywork/study– Mon/Tues, then dictation Wed. and start another lesson on Wed. too. Then another dictation on Fri. BUT that is only at the beginning when I think my son will “get it” pretty easily. We will slow down to once a week like you mentioned whenever it seems to much for him to handle. Hope that made sense. 🙂
I’m glad we will be trying this out together..always helps when you aren’t alone.
Shelly
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