AAS - Homophones (A

[goldenecho]

Has anyone used the AAS Homophones book?  What do you think of it?   If you thought it was worthwhile, how much time did your child spend on it per day or per week?   How did you balance that out with the regular lessons?   Is this something that would work for an older student?  (My son is 13).

My son is not longer homeschooling after this year so this is summer work.  I had already planned on working with him on AAS over the summer (level 3...we've done 1-2 already.).   I'm wondering if it's worth adding the homophones.  Time is an issue because, while we usually do homeschool in summer, we have a brief summer in California (2 months not 3) and I usually try to cut down work in summer to do other stuff. 

Thanks.

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by goldenecho
Adding info

[ScoutTN]

We did AAS years ago. We just kept a running list and reviewed it periodically. Helpful, but not earthshaking. I have one natural speller and one hopeless speller.

[goldenecho]

45 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:

We did AAS years ago. We just kept a running list and reviewed it periodically. Helpful, but not earthshaking. I have one natural speller and one hopeless speller.

I think their Homophones book is something new that they didn't used to have.   You buy it separately from their regular spelling program. 

 

 

[My4arrows]

20 hours ago, goldenecho said:

I think their Homophones book is something new that they didn't used to have.   You buy it separately from their regular spelling program. 

 

 

It’s older and yes separate. It’s really just worksheets with two homophones and a few problems for using them. Imo not worth the $$. I got it years ago as a freebie, so it may have changed since then, but unless it’s one which is difficult for your child not something I’d add in. Making a list of common ones or troublesome ones would be more helpful. 

[MerryAtHope]

I found it very helpful for my kids (who were also struggling spellers). What I did a lot of times was use AAS Monday through Thursday, and use a homophones worksheet on Friday unless we needed another day on spelling that week. When my kids were familiar with one of the words, I would introduce that the word is a homophone and show how the other word is spelled. Often the other word is less frequently used (for example, we use “be” much more often than “bee.”). If one of the words contains an unfamiliar phonogram, you may want to wait and cover it after that phonogram is introduced in AAS.

AAH has over 100 pages of worksheets, plus graphic organizers, card games (you would want to copy or print on cardstock), crossword puzzles etc... You can see inside through the free samples to see if it would be a fit for you and your kids. 

If you want to set up a homophones notebook, you might do one set of homophones each week starting with the graphic organizers and continuing through the activity sheet and crossword for reinforcement.

Have your kids write the two or three homophones that they are going to study on their organizer, and then they would look the words up in a dictionary, learn the meanings, write out the definition, and use the word in a sentence if there is a spot for writing out a sentence. You can do this together or have them do it as independent work, depending on their age and abilities. Some of the organizers give kids the option of drawing a picture that illustrates the word meaning rather than writing out a definition. There are various styles of organizers the kids can choose from. And the copyright lets you print or copy for your immediate family (I liked the e-book because I could easily print out pages for my kids.) 

You can really do as much with it as you want, or keep it simple and just do the worksheets. The appendix in the back also lists has a master list of hundreds more homophones. 

This article on How to Teach Homophones also has some free downloads, and there's also a fun Homophone Machine.

HTH some!