A Good Homeschool Spelling Curriculum Will Compliment the Rest of Your Language Arts Choices.

Not.

I mean seriously - did that really work for us? I can't tell to be honest but trying to explain to an 8 year old why he should write words he already knows 5x each was maddening. Little Moe did NOT buy it.

We looked and looked for several years for a good homeschool spelling curriculum and at first I was like "Spelling pelling...just find a list online, print it, and have a test."

You'd be surprised how many new moms say this on the homeschool forums. I guess we all have the same cheapskate idea at one time or another.

It didn't work for several reasons.

ONE - And you might have guessed by now - it was time consuming. Did I mention I am the anti-poster child for consuming time? Maybe I haven't mentioned that I am a single mom...but I am. So I REALLY do not have time for my time to be wasted and finding the right list online, printing it out, making up worksheets, holy crap, I couldn't take it anymore.

So I bought a "program". Which leads me to ...

TWO - those programs suck. Little Moe had a FIT. It went a little something like this:

1. Day one - write down all the words for the week.
2. Day two - do a stupid cross word puzzle (Little Moe HATES those)
3. Day three - do a alphabetizing exercise (Little Moe couldn't do that when he was 8 so we had to skip that one, and what the heck...I thought we were supposed to be learning to spell not alphabetize. They might resemble each other like first cousins, but one and the same they are not.)
4. Day four - pre-test. By this time he hadn't learned a thing and we wasted the whole week. He got most of them wrong.
5. Day five - take the test. Again, not so good on the scoring stuff.

I finally quit spelling that year altogether.

But the NEXT year I was ready! I had done some research and used my very cool and novel keywords!

I found Spelling Power! Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa <-- that is the sound of the heaven's opening up.

I cannot for the life of me recommend any other homeschool spelling curriculum and hear me now - that lady isn't paying me a dime to say this stuff.

I just believe in it. She had a cool idea and hey, it actually works.

So, to be sure it is overpriced and I don't use most of her suggestions, but we slam through like 50 words a week (I am not kidding) and he almost never gets any wrong. Turns out that Little Moe is a GREAT speller...I just never let him show off his talent.

Go check out Spelling Power and remember - this is the last spelling program you will ever buy. (NO silly, not because I think it is the next best thing to Sham-WOW, even though it is. You won't buy another because it lasts you through high school.)

And by the way - remember my new Golden Rule of Homeschool Spelling Curriculum - take the best and leave the rest. Customize it baby. Make it yours, OWN it. Drop what you don't like and keep the parts you do. It will work.

Leave Homeschool Spelling Curriculum and Go To Writing Curriculums