*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you click on the gray colored curriculum name at the top of each section, it will take you to Amazon, and I will receive a small commission for any purchases. However, all opinions are my own. Also, the websites for each company will have much greater variety and updated editions. Order through Amazon at your own risk. *
When homeschooling, your life will be made much easier if all of your children do subjects together. Bible, geography, history, science, and any supplemental subjects like the arts can easily be done with multiple ages at once. If you have children who are very close in age, or more specifically, in the same place academically, you can even do language arts and/or math together. For example, my third and fifth grader do vocabulary together and sometimes they read the same book for literature. However, for the most part, it will be impossible to lump your children together for the core subjects of math and language arts (phonics, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, writing, and reading). Children simply progress at vastly different rates in these subjects, so making an individual plan for each child is almost always a must. Learning styles always differ vastly as well, so for our family, that means that each of my kids is in a completely different spelling curriculum. Believe me, I didn’t plan it this way! Once I picked a spelling curriculum for my oldest, I had no plans to change things for the other two. My children, however, and their vastly different personalities and learning styles changed my plans. (You’ll find that is the key to homeschooling well!) Luke: Age 13
When I started my homeschool journey, I was greatly influenced by my time teaching in a classical private school. I followed The Well-Trained Mind like a homeschool Bible. That book recommends this spelling curriculum, and we used it at the school where I taught. To be honest, it didn’t seem all that great, but it was classical . . . right? I mean, I guess it teaches phonics rules for spelling, but it’s really just your typical spelling workbook:
Thankfully, Luke did fine with it. However, he is the most natural speller of my three kids. I’m not saying he’s perfect, but language arts is the subject that comes most naturally for him. He consistently gets As and Bs on his spelling tests, so I figured it was working ok. In retrospect, I think he would do fine no matter what spelling book I got for him.
Haley: Age 11
My daughter Haley is the complete opposite of Luke. Language arts is her most difficult subject while math comes easily. I also noticed that the math manipulatives helped make sense of concepts for Haley, while they really didn’t seem to do much for Luke. She also loves to draw, make crafts, and participates in the performing arts.
Spelling Workout was a complete disaster for my hands-on, creative daughter. Nevertheless, for some reason, I kept plugging along with it, thinking maybe she just needed more practice with the lists each week. So we’d drill and drill and re-test, but it never clicked. She failed every spelling test and started to believe she was a failure, too. When that happened, I realized something had to change. It wasn’t her - it was the way I was teaching it. I had heard great things about All About Spelling, but every time I looked into it, it seemed overwhelming. Then I watched a YouTube video of a mom doing a lesson with her daughter, and I realized that it wasn’t so difficult after all. The best part? It was completely hands-on, had no workbook, and there were no tests. It was just what Haley needed after feeling so defeated with her previous curriculum.
All About Spelling has a placement questionnaire on their website to help you figure out which level to start with. When I filled it out, I discovered Haley needed to start over at the very beginning. I was slightly panicked, I won’t lie, as she was already in fourth grade. However, I knew she needed a strong phonics foundation, so we started at level 1.
I’m so glad we made this change! Haley loves spelling now, and she is filled with confidence. She flew through Level 1, and even though we had to slow down after that, she is still thriving. I also noticed a huge improvement in her reading, which she had previously struggled with. If you have a creative or hands-on learner, I highly recommend this curriculum. I have also read that it helps kids with reading disabilities like dyslexia. Whenever a mom shares with me that her kid doesn’t seem to “get” spelling, I always recommend All About Spelling. Ian: Age 9
Ian is my analytical, precise thinker. He takes his time, he likes things to be neat and organized, and he doggedly keeps trying until he masters something. For all of those reasons, Traditional Spelling has been perfect for him.
Remember how I said that I was never all that impressed with Spelling Workout? Well, I was at a homeschool convention when I noticed this brand-new spelling curriculum on display at Memoria Press’s booth. The woman working the booth raved about it, as she and her kids had been beta testers on the program. I flipped through the book, loved the classical approach that I felt had been lacking in Spelling Workout, and ordered it on the spot for Ian, who was about to start first grade at the time. Even though it is a workbook and test approach, it is more phonics based than Spelling Workout. The “colorful letters” exercise each week reinforces the concepts in an analytical way that I knew would click for Ian:
I have tweaked the curriculum a bit to work better for us. Since I wasn’t using Memoria’s phonics curriculum, I ignored all the parts in the teacher book that referenced it. They claim you need to use both together, but you really don’t. I only pick one of the suggested games to do each week instead of all three. On Monday and Tuesday, the workbook page is plenty of work without a game. We don’t do the dictation page on Thursdays either because I do a “spelling bee” with all three kids. (It’s not really a spelling bee, since they have different words, they just spell their words orally in order to win chocolate chips!) We use the dictation page for his test instead. I like how it tests his knowledge of phonics sounds at the top of the page. Here’s an example:
This curriculum admittedly would not work with every kid (like my Haley, for example). However, if you have a really analytical thinker who learns by mentally “dissecting” the parts of things, this curriculum will work well for them. Ian consistently makes As on his spelling tests with Traditional Spelling.
One more caveat with this curriculum: Memoria Press currently offers levels 1, 2, and 3, and they recommend that the books be used in those grades. However, each book has 34 lessons, which is really difficult to complete in one school year. Also, when Ian was still doing phonics, we didn’t do both spelling and phonics every week, we alternated. The words in levels 2 and 3 are plenty challenging for upper elementary, so in my opinion, just these three books can take you all the way through the fifth grade. I’m hoping they will add more levels, but if they don’t, we’ll just switch to Spelling Workout in middle school. So, there you go! That’s spelling at our house. I hope by sharing my children’s learning styles and how these different curriculums have worked for them, I have helped you come up with a game plan for spelling in your own homeschool. Are there any other spelling curriculums you have loved? Share them in the comments!
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AuthorHi, I'm Melanie! I'm a homeschooling mom of three kids ages 13, 11, and 9. I have a BS in English Secondary Education from Asbury University plus 30 hours of gifted certification course work. I've taught in just about every situation you can imagine. Public school, private, homeschool hybrid, and private tutoring. The most important thing I've learned? One on one, individualized instruction can't be beat. Archives
July 2022
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