Spelling Power (really old)

  Spelling Power (3rd Edition Used)

Tammy Arp, 10/17/2008

This program is excellent for those who desire to study spelling by phonetic patterns and need to keep their children engaged in learning how to spell their words with hands-on interaction. In its test-list-test approach, it weeds out those words your children already know, so they can focus on the words they don't know. Then it offers fun hands-on activities for your children to study their words without feeling like they are doing "boring" spelling drills. I preferred to adapt the method so that on Monday I gleaned what words my children would work on for the week, had them do their fun acitivies through the week, then test on Friday, as I found the prescribed method a bit awkward and too time consuming for my family. Unless you really like all the game ideas and feel you will use most of them, I don't recommend spending the extra dollars on the activity cards but writing down a few game suggestions from the back of the book on your own notecards (my kids usually only preferred to do the same 2 or 3 games and some of them are rather laborious and messy for their worth). The negative of this program is that it doesn't appear to grow well as the children grow. As my children grew older (and already knew a lot of the repeated basic words on each list), I found the time needed to glean a spelling list grew longer and longer and that we kept skipping up levels until the lists almost became meaningless. My children grew tired of the game activites for spelling words and just wanted to learn them and move on with their day (rather than cartoon the word or play the little football game with them). I also noted a shift in other spelling programs and the state exams to a greater focus on vocabulary meaning, word origins, and latin/greek roots which Spelling Power did not offer easily. By the time I crafted a study sheet for the children to write the word, look up its meaning, use it in a sentence, then note any greek or latin root, it felt like we were "recreating the wheel" of spelling textbooks. My children did not like to have to research all their spelling words each time as it was just one more thing that made spelling take a lot longer and they, as older students, had so many other things to do and read. It was at this point we went to a vocabulary program that simplified this process (Wordly Wise) rather than a spelling program. But for the earlier grades, until your children have the basic words down, this was an excellent, phonetically based, kinesthetic program for spelling.