Hi everyone and welcome to today’s homeschool curriculum forum! Today we’re discussing the every so popular subject of spelling.
It’s no secret that I LOVE All About Learning Press products. And I’m particularly fond of the All About Spelling program. I started using them last year for our phonics and spelling help and we’ve never looked back.
One thing to note, there are only about 25 lessons in both the first and 2nd level books. I’m used to doing 1 lesson/day with my other curriculum, so obviously that wasn’t going to work. Some of the lessons for my 1st grader are pretty easy so we’re blazing through them quickly, but you are to teach to mastery with this program so after talking to the super nice people at All About Spelling I realized that you don’t need to go through 1 lesson each day. Instead you are to stay on that lesson until they’ve got the rules down pat, so we’ve slowed down a bit.
Why do I love All About Learning Press so much?
- It’s easy to do with no prep work on my part
- The phonics rules are reviewed often so kiddos remember them
- It’s a hands-on learning style that makes learning fun
- Results: I personally witnessed in overnight improvement in all of my children’s spelling and reading skills
- The kiddos love it. ‘Nuff said.
We also rotate around how we do things, some days they use tiles, some days a white board, and some days my iPad chalkboard app. We’ve stamped words, said words orally, and something we lovingly refer to as Stair Phonics. I love the flexibility and effectiveness of this program, and my kids love how fun it is.
Pros:
- Hands-on.
- Great review using flashcards and key questions.
- Easy to teach.
Cons:
- Can be pricey if you purchase multiple levels at once. To help combat this we share the student flash cards.
- Is teacher intensive time-wise as you direct all of the lessons so it’s not something you can hand to your students to do on their own.
- Word lists are appropriate for each skill, but typically too easy for my students, so we’ve added in BJU Spelling workbooks for a spelling list each week.
So, now comes the fun part!
What are your favorite Spelling curriculum, resources, websites, etc? Leave a comment below discussing your choices for this year and why.
Feel free to ask questions or reply to each other too!
It’s my way of doing a forum without actually doing a forum haha!
And hopefully this will help us all as we start the process of researching curriculum, and trying to decide what will be the best fit for our homeschool.
Note: Please keep today’s conversations geared towards SPELLING, I will be posting one for each subject separately so we can keep our comments organized.
Click here if you missed my previous Homeschool Curriculum Forum posts!
Disclosure: This was not a sponsored post, I may however be affiliated with one or more products mentioned. The opinions expressed in this post were not influenced by the company. They are products I have used and felt like sharing, cuz’ it’s my blog and I can if I want to.
We are on AAS level 3 and I love it!
I just ordered AAS 1 for both my boys to start on this summer! VERY excited…the materials are all top notch in my opinion. I also ordered AAR 1 for my soon to be 1st grader. The quality of all the material I have received from All About Learning press isn’t comparable to anything else I have bought in my first year (this year) of homeschooling!
I use AAS and AAR for all of my children. My oldest is 5th grade, and my youngest is 1st grade. My youngest loves AAR and is almost done with level 2. We plan to do level 3 AAR with AAS level 1 and 2 next year. She should move through those with no problems based on what she has learned all ready. My middle two have no problems with spelling, but my 5th grader does. He is currently working through level 2 and we go at his pace. Some lessons we do two days and some are only one. He still has trouble hearing the phonograms and often confuses i and e and wh/w. It was just this week tat I noticed he stopped confusing his B and D. So exciting! I just love this program! He wants to do spelling and can see that he is learning and it’s sticking to the point that he is actually willing to write sentences. I can’t recommend it enough!!!!!
Erica, are you using the 2nd or 1st edition of BJU Spelling? We are using BJU DL for the coming year but I am trying to decide which edition to use. The 1st comes with the package.
We use Spell to Write and Read with the Wise Guide for Spelling. It’s a k-12 currilculum, you just need a new composition notebook for each student every year. I love it because it’s phonics based (it IS our phonics curriculum as well) and between phonics and spelling rules, spelling is simple. The kids read a lot, too, and I consider that part of spelling – seeing so many words spelled correctly has to help!
I’m almost through AAS Level 2 with my 6 year old and I thought I loved the program until a few weeks ago when he started complaining every time we pulled out the spelling book. He seems to enjoy pretty much everything else we do, so this was surprising to me. I’ve realized that he’s just bored. He was an early reader and a natural speller, and I totally agree with Erica that the spelling words in AAS are pretty easy. In the first two levels we haven’t come across any words yet that he didn’t already know how to spell. So now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m starting to wonder if so much emphasis on phonics rule is necessary for someone who is a naturally good speller. I didn’t know many of the rules we’ve covered myself until I started teaching him AAS and it hasn’t hindered my ability to be a good speller because words generally just look right or wrong to me. I just don’t want to see him struggling as he gets older if we don’t put enough emphasis on it while he’s young. If anyone has any insight about this question, or any recommendations for a program that works better for an already good speller I’d love to hear it!
I would think it’s not the program. My son gets really bored with everything, so I just have to mix things up. My son is a natural speller (so am I). I’ve tried to get him to tell me when he is bored and I give him a few options. He can read over the spelling rules, he can copy the words, or he can take the test. We do Spelling Power. I personally think that phonograms and spelling rules are really great learning tools. I am a natural speller and definitely didn’t learn any of these, but I do think it helps him. I think it probably helps with reading more than spelling, but reading and spelling are so closely related that I’m not even sure you can break them apart.
I also try to go pretty quickly through things b/c of the boredom issue. I try to give him breaks when he needs them and try to give him as much variety as possible.
My son also gets bored with it from time to time, but he doesn’t want to switch. He hates writing and workbook work. If he is getting it, shorten the word lists he has to spell and move on. You keep reviewing, so he will see it again. You will hit a point where it gets harder and then you can slow down. We have him write a few, then spell a few out loud, then build a few. You could have him get up and jump in place while he spells a word. My eight year old is a pretty good speller already, so we joked in the early levels about how ‘hard’ this lesson is going to be, and I would shake my head and say ‘oh this is a really hard one, get ready” and then give him something like ‘frog’ and he would crack up.
I have some reluctant spellers and AAS has worked for us. We started it this year and my 2 oldest (2nd grade) went through Level 1 and almost half way through Level 2. My first grader is just going to finish Level 1. We enjoy it but probably don’t review as much as I should. I too alternate dry erase board, paper with markers, chalkboard, and tiles to make it more interesting. They write the sentences on paper so that I can include them in their portfolio.
We’ve used Spelling Workout and All About Spelling. We are going to stick with AAS all the way through. It is the one program I cannot imagine homeschooling without! We love it!
Hi Erica!!! Just wanted to stop by and leave a little blog love!! <3 It was nice to find a post on one of my favorite companies…I've never looked at their spelling program, but we've loved the handwriting!!
Thanks for always contributing to the homeschool community!
This year was our first year homeschooling. We used A Reason for Spelling. I initially thought my boys (6& 8) would love it because it is very colorful and had a lot of different activities and puzzles to do to help learn the words. My 6 year old has done fine with it but my 8 year old struggles a lot with the worksheet format and he just doesn’t learn and retain the spelling of the words as I had hoped he would. Also it is very much geared to a classroom setting rather than homeschool. That being said, we are making a shift to using My Father’s World curriculum for next year but have struggled with settling on doing Spelling Power. I have also looked at Sequential Spelling (DVD format) and just cannot decide. I would love to hear back from anyone who has used either of these programs successfully or not with boys (mine will be 2nd & 3rd grade next year).
I used sequential spelling with my autistic son who has processing disorders and loved it! It was used from age 9, he is now 18 and we still use it! The lists will follow some sort of pattern that build upon each other or change/add a letter to spell the next word. Each word is corrected immediately, so he didn’t have the chance for the wrong spelling to sink in:) it’s a straight forward program!