Home Grown Hearts Academy Homeschool Blog: Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements ~ Review

Hello friends, I'm so excited to share a new review with you all today. My oldest daughter and I recently had the opportunity to review Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements (Level F) from Spelling You See. Last year I had the chance to review a different level with another daughter and we fell in love with the program. I knew that this was going to be a great review for my struggling speller.

What is Spelling You See?

Spelling You See is from the same fabulous company, Demme Learning, that brought us Math-U-See. It was developed by a wonderful woman named, Dr. Karen Holinga. It is a homeschool spelling curriculum with seven levels that follow the developmental stages of language development. Placement is not based on grade but on the student’s level of language development. It is their philosophy that students all move through the same stages as they are learning to spell, but that the pace of each child is unique to that child.

I love that the Spelling You See program allows students to develop spelling skills naturally and at their own pace.

What is Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements?

Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements is level F in the Spelling You See program. It is recommended for the student who can read and a write complete paragraphs comfortably.

There are two student workbooks in Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements. Each workbook has 18 lessons that are divided into five parts, A through E. So all together there are 36 lessons. The only tools needed to complete the workbooks are a pencil and colored pencils or highlighters.

My daughter is thoroughly enjoying Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements and is learning how to spell by relying upon visual memory through repeated reading and repeated writing. She has been completing short daily activities in the first workbook that include:

Chunking
Copywork
Dictation

On the first day of a lesson she reads a passage aloud to me and then "chunks" the appropriate letter patterns indicated for the lesson. She really enjoys chucking the passages. I was a little worried that she might not enjoy it, but to my surprise she does. I think it's great that it is truly helping her look for patterns and how to remember to spell words.correctly. In the next section she copies the passage and then "chunks" it again.

On the second and third days of a lesson, reading, chucking, and copywork are again repeated.

On the fourth and fifth days my daughter has to write the passage from dictation. She has been struggling a little bit with the writing from dictation portion but I have been able to offer the help that is needed and she has shown vast improvement since she first started. It is recommeded that if the day four dicatation is completed easily, you can skip the second dictation.So far we have found the second dictation to be extremely helpful.

One of the things that we both really enjoy in Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements are the stories. Not only is my daughter learning to spell but she is also learning some very interesting history. For example, because of this awesome program she has learned about the Cave of Lascaux, silkworms, cuneiform, the Goseck Circle. Her exposure to these topics through Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements has created a bigger interest in history and she has even been seeking out more information on the subjects. I'm pretty impressed to say the least.

Another favorite of ours is that each lesson includes a special feature called a Spotlight. The Spotlight introduces interesting facts about words that are found in the passage. These have been fun to read and very helpful in my daughters studies.

My favorite book of the program is the Instructor's Handbook.

The Instructor's Handbook includes a getting started page, lesson-by-lesson instructions, a weekly activity guide, and resources to help within each lesson. Each section has proved to be extremely valuable. I'm so glad that I have a handbook that has allowed me to make sure that we are correctly using the program. It sure has made helping my daughter an easy task.

I like that the resources pages include passages for dictation and an answer key for the chucking. It has been nice to be able to use the answer key when checking my daughters work.

Final Thoughts:

Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements is a program that we plan on sticking with. I have always felt that if a program is working than you should stick with it. It's working! I'm also glad that it is a program that my daughter enjoys. I have seen vast improvement in the short weeks since beginning and I'm excited to see more improvements in the future. We highly recommend Spelling You See.

What Does Spelling You See: Ancient Achievements Cost?

You can currently purchase the Ancient Achievements Student Pack for only $30.00

You can also purchase the Ancient Achievements Instructor's Handbook for only $14.00

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