Spelling has been the only subject my son really struggles with and with him being a perfectionist it is not acceptable to him and he gets very discouraged and upset about it. On that note with the help of my dear sister, Smiling Dawn, she suggested doing some spelling extras such as creating word searches, have him color in bubble letters of his words, ect. He did get a 100% this past week but I don't want him to get bored with the extras, I want it to always be fun and "new". My question is what do you do for a little extra work in spelling that your children enjoy and helps them remember their spelling words?
You can try signing him up for spellingtime.com. My ds really loved that. However, my dd got bored with it. For my dd, I created the word searches and so forth. You can try teachingmadeeasier.com. Just sign up for the demo so you can see how the sheets are created. They have a few fun packets and spelling packets. YOu can print them out in the demo and see if you like it. I also had my dd made mobiles when the spelling words all had the same phonetic ending. So the middle with say "eigh" and then attach the spelling words to that...of course she made the picture of the word out of construction paper...she loves that kind of thing. I also wrote letters on construction paper and cut out the letters. Then I mixed them all up and she had to arrange them in her spelling words as fast as possible. I only cut out letters that applied to the word list. On the first day I allowed her to use her word list and then after that I took it away. She liked that also.
I bought Spellmaker from www.schoolexpress.com. It has activities that they can do on the computer or you can prin them out to do on paper. That way, the child can decide which activities they want to do. My dd likes to play scrabble to practice her spelling words. When it's nice out, she'll go out & write them with sidewalk chalk (now she also gets to do that inside, because we painted a wall in her room with magnetic chalkboard paint). She liked using letter magnets to create words (now she uses word magnets to create poetry & stories). Sometimes I'll have her write a story or poem using as many of her spelling words as she can. We use her spelling words as her vocabulary words (it makes more sense to do just one list), so she also looks up definitions, synonyms, and antonyms. I'm not sure of your son's age, if I knew that I might be able to come up with something age appropriate.
We use Spelling Power and it comes with activities cards. Spelling Power isn't always fun but it does get down to business, uses different techniques to learn misspelled words and is usually done in about 15 min or less. It is grouped by spelling rules and he doesn't have to work on words he already knows how to spell. We went through Abeka, Spelling Workout and now Spelling Power. This is the only one that has worked for us.
When Ems struggles with certain words, I take the word, say it, and then Ems gives the first letter in the word. Then I say the next letter and so on. We take turns until the word is spelled. If she says the wrong letter, then we start over. Except I start the word. This way, when we get to the letter she missed, I say it correctly and she can hear it. This makes it more like a game and we can do it in the car, in the market, while washing dishes, or wherever and it does help her learn. Patty
