As I mentioned in my previous post, A Seusserful Day!, March is National Reading Month. Dyslexia is a learning disability often overlooked when young children are struggling to learn to read and write. Diagnosing dyslexia early can help prevent children from getting behind in their learning, and more importantly, from loosing their self-esteem and desire to learn. Lexercise offers online testing and services to help children with reading, writing, and spelling disorders such as dyslexia and dysgraphia. Maureen at Spell Out Loud uses Lexercise with her daughter and has written a comprehensive review of Lexercise. If your child or a child you know is struggling to read, write, and spell, use Lexercise's free online dyslexia test to see if dyslexia could be the cause.
I love my children's school. The courses are full of resources to make learning more interactive and fun...except for the spelling program. They use Scott Forseman's Reading Street for Language Arts. The reading and grammar portions of the course are fine, but the spelling portion is very boring and doesn't really explain spelling rules well. It is simply a list of words to memorize each week. As a result, I did some searching for alternatives. Like I said, I love my children's school. Since their spelling pages are not graded by the teacher, I have the freedom to substitute my own spelling assignments if I wish. While I found All About Spelling very thorough, I wasn't ready to spend $30 for their interactive kit and $30-$40 per level for the 7 level program. On the other hand, Spell By Color is free! It isn't nearly as in-depth, but it does cover the basics well. If you are looking for something you can use for spelling with your home schooled student, or even to supplement your traditionally schooled student's spelling program, then I highly recommend Spell By Color.
Karissa
