Please note, this post contains affiliate links, but my opinions are all my own.
Last year was our first year homeschooling. Being overwhelmed by all the different curriculum choices and not really knowing about different teaching and learning styles, I did what so many first time homeschooling moms do. I purchased an all-in-one curriculum package. It was bright and colorful, full of worksheets and most importantly very easy to open the book and teach the lesson. While I did like this program for many of the subjects, there were a couple subjects where this particular program just didn’t work for us. One of those subjects was spelling. Grasshopper hated spelling class. The way these lessons taught were not aligned with his learning style.
He is a kinesthetic learner and needs to be constantly moving. Hands on activities where he can use manipulatives are where he excels, especially if it’s a subject matter that just doesn’t grab his attention. I mean lets be honest, who gets excited about learning why we spell the way we do?
The program we were using was just not working. He didn’t care about the worksheets of activities, and they were not helping to reinforce the lesson. Trying to get him to memorize his spelling list was a constant struggle. There were many tears in spelling class last year. It was time to call it and look for an alternative. We used this program for 3 1/2 months before I decided to purchase something else. I did a lot more research and came across the All About Spelling Program.
This program seemed amazing when I was looking into it. It’s a multi-sensory approach to learning which was exactly what Grasshopper needed. It also takes a self paced, mastery approach. Rather than getting a list of words to do each week, you learn the rules as to why we spell the way we do which really helps your child spell other words outside their list of words for the week. It looked great so I thought I would give it a try. I figured it would be a success if he would just stop crying every time we did spelling class.
This program not only delivered, but far exceeded my expectations! Not only were we no longer having tears during spelling, he was ASKING to do spelling class! We went from having outright meltdowns to being excited about spelling. He caught on very quickly and started getting 100% on every spelling test.
The interactive kit includes letter tiles that are color coded for constants and vowels. It also include constant teams, vowel teams, the sounds of /er/ and the sounds of /sh/. There is also a free app that will pronounce the phonograms if you need to make sure you’re teaching them correctly. They recommend getting a 2×3 magnetic white board for the letter tiles which is what we did and it works great. The best part about the interactive kit is that you only need to purchase it once, which is fantastic for those of you like me who are on a budget. It is a very comprehensive program that is even teaching me a thing or two. All About Spelling also uses the Orton-Gillingham Approach which is recommended with kids who struggle with dyslexia.
Want to know more? Check out this video. If you’ve already been using another spelling program but want to make the switch you can use this free placement test to see which level to start with.
If you have any questions about this please ask! It has seriously been game changing for us.
All About Learning Press also has a reading program called All About Reading. We did start using this program as well this year. Watch for my review after we’ve used it long enough for an honest opinion 🙂
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