Dictation Day by Day for spelling and writing

[MistyMountain]

I am thinking of using Dictation Day by Day with my 2nd grader because I think she would benefit from practicing spelling in the context of a sentence. I would probably work with her on segmenting the days words and then dictate the sentence to her. For now it will be writing and spelling and I also work on oral narrations. I would skip any bible verses mainly because the wording is akward using words like thy and change names like changing Dick into Nick. Is there anything similar that has spelling words in context of sentences that gradually get longer and more complex and will have new words in subsequent lessons that is more modern? At least it is free to try out. Does any one use Dictation Day by Day and like it? I was focusing more on getting her reading this school year but she is making good progress and I wanted to start a little bit of spelling and writing. 

[HomeAgain]

We used Dictation DBD.  We're on our second book of it.  The only thing I have found similar is Spelling Wisdom, which is sold on Rainbow Resource.  I believe that uses prepared dictation, though, rather than cold.  Other than that, though, it does look like it might fit the bill for you. 

DBD does not have any bible verses.  Grade 3 has poetry and some are religious in nature, which gave us an opportunity to point out things like the capitalization of pronouns when referring to God.  We do change names (our choices were "Jack" and 'kitty').  Other than that, we haven't found it to be a bad program.  DS (8yo) really likes it.  I thought about switching him to something else but since AAS had already been a bust here I wasn't going to rock the boat when he refused.  We address spelling rules as needed, but the words come around often enough that he intuits the spelling.
The only other free spelling program I know of is Spell By Color.  For that, the first level is free, and it segments words like SYS does.  I don't believe it does dictation, though.