All About Spelling

I've been getting a lot of questions about homeschooling, what we use how my days go, etc.  This is a the first of several posts that I'll be writing about it, then I can direct people to my blog to answer their questions.

All About Spelling is our spelling curriculum.  What I like most about it is that it teaches the rules for spelling.  Surprisingly enough there are rules to spelling in English.  There are many words that the rules don't apply to, either because of established traditional spellings, or because of changes in language after the spelling rules were established.  Then there are the pesky words from foreign languages that we are so fond of.  English has way more words than German because of this.  But, for the elementary set, it's pretty easy to teach the basics and a few of the exceptions.
I chose this curriculum because other spelling curricula focused mostly on memorizing the way words are spelled.  This is how I was taught to spell, and I HATED it.  I never did well on spelling tests.  Now, I'm a good speller because I write and read a lot and because every time I misspell a word, a little red line shows up underneath it (thank you spell check).  I wanted a spelling program that did something different than giving a list of words to memorize.  I prefer to see a logic to something, that's my learning and my teaching style.  The children seem to like it better too.  We briefly tried another spelling curriculum and of course they had a more traditional spelling experience in school.  The are responding much better to All About Spelling.
If you aren't homeschooling, but have a struggling speller, I would recommend getting this curriculum to help them out.  It may not coincide with what they are doing at school, but it will help them in the long run.
The All About Spelling website has sample lessons and shows pictures of the materials.
With Bailey and Abigail, we rarely use the tiles, because they are good spellers, so it is more like we are reviewing the material.  With Lucy I am sure that I will use the tiles more like the program recommends.  The nice thing about this program is that it can easily be tailored to your needs.