Sunflower Faith

Spelling was something that I wasn’t too sure how I was going to approach and something, I’ve been researching for awhile. 

When I first open it, I wasn’t sure what to expect and wonder, oh no, is it going to be complicated and something I’m really going to have to learn,so I figure, I’ll wait till the kids are on Spring Break, no pressure, and play with it then.

I was surprised how fast it took to learn the program. When you initially open the program, there’s six options to choose from.

If you want to just try out the program before leaping into creating a spelling list, there are several word lists that are currently available on SpellQuizzer.

However, you don’t have to just use those lists.

As you can tell on the picture, you not only have the option of creating a spelling list or importing ones from SpellQuizzer, but you have the option of exporting spelling lists.

This is great for homeschoolers who want to create spelling lists for specific curriculums to exchange with others.

How it works is that you basically click on “Quiz me”; Choose a spelling list you want to be quizzed on and the following window, pops up:

My kids really enjoy the audio feature of SpellQuizzer.

With a microphone that you can find for cheap at any store, SpelQuizzer allows you not only to create word lists, use definitions for the kids to associate a word with, or just hint, but you can also record the audio of the word to play for the kids to hear and then guess the correct spelling.

This is great for families who are multi-lingual to teach their kids to read and spell a foreign language and also it makes it easy for parents to have kids working on their spelling lists wearing headphones, while they use that time to work/teach their other children.

Or say you are teaching several children the same spelling curriculum.

If you want to individual test them, you can do so that way (the program allows for randomizing words) or together while your working with another child (great for families who are homeschooling multiple children).

The only drawback I could find with SpellQuizzer, is that there is no option to score percentages which is helpful for those who are required to keep records or want to keep spelling test scores so it would have to manual, but who knows, this may end up being an added feature in the future.

If you want to find out more about SpellQuizzer you can find out at their website here, but you’re going to find it was so user friendly, even had a video demo.

There’s a  30 day free trial demo then you have the option of paying for it or you can get it free through TrialPay.

The way that works (TrialPay) is that you  choose from a selection of offers from qualifying partner companies. When you complete an offer, you receive a free license for the software.

So if you’re on a budget like myself and other homeschoolers and looking for something that is worth the investment and is inexpensive , TrialPay, is  an avenue to look at and in the meantime, you can just try it out first for thirty days before buying or doing the trial pay.

Since we are on a tight budget, it’s hard to find a really good Spelling curriculum that we clicked with, and would want to buy, so this is really a great alternative to buying a spelling curriculum and worrying that half way through or even first chapter, we may end up going, this isn’t for us.

Something that I would like to see, and hope maybe an option is, printing out the word list, but really, I like this program because I don’t have to worry about paper (or being frugal since this is all on the computer), the kids love hearing the words sounded out and typing in the words, this is a GREAT way to introduce kids to computers at a young age and you don’t have to worry about content because, well, you create the content and they are learning without knowing it…

Now when the kids get older and realize they are having to do spelling, that might be a different story, lol.

I really like this program big time.

I ended up downloading the “Books of the Bible” spelling list for me (blush), since that is something that can help me in my bible study and hey, I get to try it out for when I use it with the kids for their bible study.

As I create spelling lists of my own for this program, I plan on sharing them here with and for you, so check back often if you start using the programs yourself!

Let me know what you think of SpellQuizzer and what you think of it yourself.

I was thinking of starting a yahoo group to share spelling lists created since this is a relatively new program, but if you have or do start one first, let me know and I’ll join!