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At what point do you do vocabulary instead of spelling (if at all)?


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It looks like my 8 yo is going to actually finish the extended Ayres list this year at the back of my Spalding book. I'm curious what you all move to at that point? He's a decent speller and a good reader. I know that I LOVED learning new vocabulary/spelling and then looking for those words in my reading when I was old enough, but we didn't start that in school until middle school and I don't know how I would've felt about it at a younger age. Is it worth it to do something like AAS or another spelling program, is it worth it just to give him extra reading time, would starting latin be a better idea for learning word roots and all that (we do already speak a 2nd language and he's doing grade-level work in German, so another language wouldn't be completely unfamiliar to him), or would it be worthwhile to do some other vocabulary program?

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My DD started Etymology at about age 8-9, and took the National Classical Etymology for three years at age 9-11. She really loves the "where words come from" and word families type of research. The Ellen McHenry Excavating English is a great program for this, and so is the Word Up! DVD for word roots, by Dwayne Thomas of Visual Latin. Suki at Athena's Academy does a really good Etymology class, as well as a vocabulary one-my DD was her TA for a few semesters because she enjoyed it so much. (in general, anything taught by Suki has been a hit for my kid who loves language almost as much as she loves snakes).

Edited by dmmetler
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My DD started Etymology at about age 8-9, and took the National Classical Etymology for three years at age 9-11. She really loves the "where words come from" and word families type of research. The Ellen McHenry Excavating English is a great program for this, and so is the Word Up! DVD for word roots, by Dwayne Thomas of Visual Latin. Suki at Athena's Academy does a really good Etymology class, as well as a vocabulary one-my DD was her TA for a few semesters because she enjoyed it so much. (in general, anything taught by Suki has been a hit for my kid who loves language almost as much as she loves snakes).

 

Thanks! I really enjoyed that kind of word study too and that word up dvd looks great (though I think it's funny that it's labeled vol 1 but there's no vol 2 that I can find!)

 

I'm pretty unsure of what our future language plans are, honestly. I don't want to take on much more of anything that they can't do independently, honestly, because I feel kinda stretched already. I've never wanted to study latin with my kids and preferred to focus on the language I'm actually trying to get them fluent in, but I hear so many arguments for latin-study being good for vocabulary and grammar learning that I waffle a bit on this subject. My kids like languages - but the truth is that they'd always be happier with less "schoolwork" and more time to build legos and practice handstands and play with the new dog. :)

Edited by 4kookiekids
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That's around the age that I quit using a spelling book and started using either Wordly Wise or Vocabulary with Classical Roots. My older preferred the Roots books. They can be done independently - all you need to do is check them. Sometimes I'd pick some of the words and do a spelling test on them, but it wasn't structured 'spelling', it was just spelling the vocab words. Every few years, I do a review of spelling rules using Halverson's Spelling Works!, which my kid thinks is fun.

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We've never used any real spelling program. Spelling just kind of happens, as part of reading and writing.

Every now and then my daughter asks for some spelling and we do lists of commonly misspelled words. 

But really, I've never had to teach spelling.

 

She uses vocabulary.com quite regularly and it has spelling built into it too, if you want to master a section.

My daughter chooses lists of interest. Recently she has worked on music vocab and biochem vocab.

 

https://www.vocabulary.com/ 

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We've never used any real spelling program. Spelling just kind of happens, as part of reading and writing.

Every now and then my daughter asks for some spelling and we do lists of commonly misspelled words. 

But really, I've never had to teach spelling.

 

She uses vocabulary.com quite regularly and it has spelling built into it too, if you want to master a section.

My daughter chooses lists of interest. Recently she has worked on music vocab and biochem vocab.

 

https://www.vocabulary.com/ 

 

Thanks for the resource! I'll check it out. I have a kiddo who doesn't intuit spelling and wants to be given rules and reasons, which is how I ended up with Spalding after trying and failing with half a dozen other reading programs. :)

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