online spelling games?

[skimomma]

We are currently using Sequential Spelling and have since the beginning. We are halfway through Book 3. Dd is beyond bored with it. She is naturally a decent speller. She was an early, mostly self-taught reader, which was awesome. But I have noticed as she has been working on spelling that she does not always have a firm grasp on phonics. She will often substitute incorrect vowels in longer and more complex words. I do not know how much of that is normal or if it is a real problem. I only preface with this info in case someone reads this and thinks I might be making a mistake.

 

I would like to move away from SS and to something more fun and independent. A program full of spelling rules is not going to fly with dd right now. She really just needs to play with spelling and start to enjoy it more. Any recommendations for online spelling games? I would be especially interested in games that use word groupings similar to SS.

[Stef03]

I'm not familiar with SS but I know a lot of families use http://www.spellingcity.com/ (I believe you can make your own lists on there so you could group them in a similar fashion to SS).

[Walking-Iris]

I used spellingcity along with SS when we first started. You can make your custom lists as well for those words that need more practice. Are you using the SS student workbook? It has simple games, writing prompts and vocabulary work.(such as our lesson yesterday about the pronunciation difference in progress--prah gress as a noun and pro gress as a verb) As far as phonics, when my ds has trouble with one of the words on his list, spelling it or reading it, I color block that word. This is the number one mistake people make using SS IMHO. Ignoring that advice in the TM about color blocking. So for a word such as beginning, as one example, the be would be red, ginn blue, ing green. Breaking the syllables, patterns, prefixes and suffixes into color blocks helps my ds to read it and spell it. It also helps to read the word in context and to discuss the grammar involved. It's one thing to be able to spell "delegate" and quite another to understand how to pronounce it depending on it being a noun or verb. Those lessons are where SS shines imo. Rules won't help with those situations. Also to stave off boredom with the program, I skip days. There's no reason at all to do a list daily. I don't skip lists, but we will have a day without spelling on the schedule. Keep in mind these books are leveled, not graded. They are also available as a cd-rom so a child can practice independently on a computer.