Intellikids! Early Learning Down Under: All about spelling

Hi Readers,

Recently I made a purchase from the Institute for the excellence in writing to teach my eldest dd how to write,(Primary Arts of Language) in this pack also came a program to help teach your child how to spell. So far my dd and I have just completed lesson 6 and my dd is absolutely loving it.

All about spelling is a spelling program was created by Marie Rippel and what I really love about this program is a great hands on approach for kids (who may or may not be able to write) it really encourages you to use many ways to make spelling fun and as tactile as possible and it also encourages you to be flexible. You know your child the best so find out what works and stick with it.

What I love is the no pressure approach which is especially important for teaching young children and the key is 'Don't worry about completing each lesson every day or worry about getting behind the goal is mastery of the key concepts.'

We go over a few of the concepts every day and play games like "what 3 sounds does this letter make" and I show her the letter 'a'. We play lots of games and use lots of mediums to convey the key concepts

I have to also say from my standpoint I just open it up to the lesson I'm working on get out the materials I need and just get started. Which is great for me as I don't have a huge amount of time to be preparing materials.

So I must share this with you. It is a great little program and well worth it if you want to teach your kids how to spell.

So I will summarise in dot points the pros and cons

PROS

Each step laid out in a book with lots of hints and tips
Flexible approach no lesson has to be mastered in a day take the time your child needs (I have broken 1 lesson down into 3 small lessons.
Its fun
All the materials you need are include in the pack
A certificate for the child once they have completed the course
A progress chart so your child can tick off or colour in each lesson
A chart to colour in all the letter sounds once you master them

CONS

I did spend a lot of time prepping the materials BUT I laminated all the cards which you don't have to do which is time consuming in itself and I magnetised each of the individual letter tiles myself as they don't come magnetised. It is up to you if you wish to magnetise the letter tiles and laminate the cards which you don't have to do. I just did this for longevity of the materials

Wish it came with a few more progress charts, sound charts and certificate would be great to be used with subsequent children.

Here are some photos of my DD miss S doing some spelling

As you can see some of the tiles letters on a magnetic white board, we use these quite a bit. You can also see Miss S likes to practice writing as well. Just completed her first 'spelling test' she got 10/10