Our Favorite Spelling Program

This year we decided to go with something a little different that our usual Abeka Spelling program. My amazing homeschool friend and neighbor brought this book over to my house for me to review. I absolutely fell in love with it at first site. The program, Spelling Power, was written by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon, who left her job as a teacher at a private school to homeschool her daughters. One of her daughters had trouble with spelling like she had as a child so she began to research and experiment wtih methods that would help her daughter. I will briefly sum up how this curriculum works. First of all you pretest your child to see what their spelling level is. There are two tests, and once those are finished you are directed where to start your child for the year. Unlike most spelling programs, you take a test at the BEGINNING. When you purchase the edition that we did you get a disk that has all the forms, worksheets, etc. to print out for your children. If you have an older version, you can find the disk online or you can workbooks that have the forms for you. You start testing your child and through this testing process you go word by word. Once your child has missed three words, you stop the test and then there is another worksheet for their mispelled words. This worksheet helps them through the process of studying the mispelled words. There are other fun activities that can be done to help them with spelling such as painting the words or drawing the words in sand to help an active learner. These can be found on the disk or there is a card set that can be purchased separately if you purchase the older edition that does not come with the CD's. The next day, you start the testing process again and you start with the mispelled words and continue after the third mispelled word. The child is not tested on the words they spell correctly. Our set came with the computer game. this is especially fun with my boys as once I key in their lists and then dictate the words through the prompting of the program through my microphone, I can let them test and retest at their hearts content until they get the words. My computer loving boys are thrilled to do spelling now and even fight over who gets to do their spelling on the computer first. We also recieved a DVD in which the author takes you step by step through the process and thoroughly explains the program to you. It's like taking a teaching seminar and once you have watched it, you are ready to jump into the program!! The best part about this program is that it works for about 2nd Grade - College or Adult level spelling. What a bargain when we were spending a lot more for yearly curriculum through Abeka or Saxon! You can get these books on Christian Book Distributors or new and used on E-Bay. I would love to hear from those of you who have also tried this program to see what your experiences have been with it.