Vocabulary SpellingCity is an online spelling and vocabulary website that can be used with students of all ages. Their mission is to offer an efficient game-based study of literacy skills using practically any word list. With over 42,000 spelling words in the database, teachers can assign spelling and vocabulary words to be studied and learned through the use of over 25 games that include matching, fill-in-the-blank, word search, and hang mouse (like hang man). There are also activities that teach alphabetizing, work on parts of speech and help improve handwriting. These are great additions to our daily grammar lessons.
An online program, I have been reviewing the Premium Family Membership which costs $29.99 a year. This license allowed me to register up to 5 students. Once I signed into the website, it didn't take long to have my children working away. With a set-up of less than a minute, I was ready to begin. I quickly added my children as my students and began assigning spelling words to their individualized list. Because it's summer time and we were needing a spelling review before we jumped back into our full school schedule, I pulled out my spelling master notebook and made review lists for each of them. I started with the 20 words that they missed from last year's weekly spelling lessons because I thought that would be a manageable number of words to begin. As I created the lists that they would use for their review lessons, Vocabulary SpellingCity caught my mistakes and prompted me to correct them. For words that I typed incorrectly, I was given the option to add my own definitions OR correct my spelling. {Gotta love it when the teacher messes up.} The multitude of Teaching Resources are quite useful to me as well.
You can set up your spelling lists with as few or as many words as you think your student can handle. One of my favorite things about Vocabulary SpellingCity is that the entire website is COMPLETELY CUSTOMIZABLE to fit the exact needs that are presented at your house. I have designed each of my children's activities around what their individual strengths and weaknesses are. For example, the Princess really excelled when using the spelling words in contextual sentences. The Boy Scout struggled with a hang man type game -- trying to figure out where letters should be when no definitions were presented. We learned that he does not do well when faced with too many blank spaces. He needs a hint to get him started. For both of them, I assigned several different games for each of the spelling lists.
My Junior is an ace speller so I assigned just two practice activities before the spelling test. Although she didn't need to spend too much time with the spelling games, the paragraph writing practice has been marvelous. What I like most about Vocabulary SpellingCity is that there is something here for everyone. This one program is well worth every penny that it costs. It is a great bargain for a homeschool family. Less than $30 for an entire year of spelling, vocabulary and grammar? That's pretty much unheard of!
What typically is a drudgery part of our day -- me calling out spelling words and the visible stress that takes over some of my children -- has become something fun that my children look forward to doing each day. Not only can my children be working simultaneously on their laptops, but I can also have them working on the iPads as well with the Spelling City app. How much fun is that? Vocabulary SpellingCity definitely makes the Top Ten list of things I like. We'll be using it quite a a bit this year -- and no one is complaining. That fits in perfectly with my goals for educational fun at Long Leaf Academy. You can try it out for FREE and if you like it, you can purchase your premium membership and get started today. I think you'll like all the added features that the premium membership gives you access to and you'll be be glad you joined.
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That sounds helpful.
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