I spent the first 6 years of homeschooling preparing most of our curriculum myself from a mixture of things I created or things I found for free. That worked really well for us for the most part until my daughter began to struggle. I tried many things to help her with reading, writing and spelling. I used How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and that helped her learn how to blend sounds and from there she was able to work her way to third grade books.
We then tried working on writing. I thought that since she was reading better, she should be able to write well. We focused on spelling words and writing paragraphs. She was so frustrated with writing. She could never come up with her own idea, and with her limited phonics skills, she was having so much trouble spelling.
With the trouble she had with phonics she was not able to use her phonics skills she did have to spell the words she could easily read. I decided I needed some help. I started researching some spelling curriculum. I wanted something that would move systematically through sounds and spelling patterns. I decided to go with All About Spelling. I had been reading how it worked well for students with reading difficulties and dyslexia because of the systematic approach it used. I thought this would be perfect for her.
Now, my oldest is in 5th grade. She can confidently spell many simple CVC words and sight words, but anything beyond that is very difficult for her. I decided to start her all the way back at level 1. I wanted to make sure that foundation was there for her to build on. So far, we have completed 12 lessons. She has excelled and gone quickly through them, as I thought she would. She is building confidence in her ability to spell by working on these easier lessons before we get to the area where she has the most difficulty.
I love the way they have a hands on approach with the letter tiles. We have used our refrigerator as our magnetic board to work on words, as that keeps our tiles out of the reach of our preschooler. My daughter loves being able to manipulate the tiles and not have to write down everything. She looks forward to the spelling lessons and have asked to keep going further and further. She is definitely gaining confidence in spelling, and recognizing that she knows more than she thought.
If you have a child struggling with spelling phonetically, I would highly recommend this curriculum. My daughter has already expressed more confidence in her spelling. She did not realize how many words she could actually spell.
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