November 13, 2011

Spelling City Review

I was excited when Spelling City approached me with the opportunity to review  their online curriculum.  As a homeschooling mom, I am always excited to introduce a new way to learn those challenging words. 

Spelling City has pre-made reading lists containing over 40,000 words. If you would rather make your own spelling list, you can do that as well. Once you determine your word list you get to choose from 25 activities to reinforce these words. My children's favorite activities were HangMouse, Word-O-Rama, Letter Fall & Alphabetize.


The Kid's Review:

Dragon: I have enjoyed the some of the games. The games that I have not enjoyed would be better if there was less repetition of the same sentences. For example, in Match It Sentences, the same sentence will repeat a couple of times. I would enjoy it more if they only used the same sentence one time per game. I really found HangMouse challenging due to a lack of hints. I would enjoy it more if there were more hints other than the number of letters. 

Tracker: I think that the games were a good mix of easy and challenging. I found the most challenging game to be HangMouse. My favorite game was Word-O-Rama. I enjoy Spelling City.

Squirrel: I think that it is great! My favorite game has to be HangMouse. It would of been even better if there was a  word list on the screen.

My Review: Overall I really enjoyed Spelling City. I found it easy to manage the assignments. I really liked being able to track each child's progress throughout  the week.  I also liked being able to print out flash cards that included the word and definition. I  did notice that my children were getting frustrated with a couple of the activities.  Tracker & Squirrel were having a difficult time with Sentence Writing Practice. They found it long. It would of been better if there was a way to pause the activity in the middle. It is hard for dyslexics to put thoughts to paper, or computer in this case.  I would recommend this program to my friends.




I've been given a premium membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for a candid, personal, online review.
VocabularySpellingCity.com helps students study word lists using 25 different learning activities such as Crossword Puzzle, HangMan, and Handwriting Worksheets. Parents can create their own spelling lists, find published lists already available on the site, or use any of dozens of free teaching resources such as sound-alike words, and contractions. Be sure to come back in three weeks to read about my experience.
 
There might be more free memberships available for bloggers. If you're interested, find out how you can review VocabularySpellingCity.com.






2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi there! I enjoyed reading your review. We have been using SpellingCity for a while now and just recently renewed our premium membership. Both of my boys, ages 12 and 7, really enjoy it. They were doing weekly written spelling words and tests before we found VSC, so I don't know that they would tell me if they didn't like something for fear of going back to that, lol. But your children's feedback on some of the activities was really great to hear. I'm going to ask mine about those activities. :)

Also, I have found when I have a technical issue, or a suggestion for something on the site, the customer support seems to be willing to listen and take what is said into consideration. They even have a feedback thread in their forums. It might be good to pass your info along to see if something can be done about those issues.

Ok, sorry for writing a book, lol. Again, I enjoyed your review!

Katie
Georgia mommy, homeschooling two boys since 2005

Sandra said...

My favorite games on VocabularySpellingCity:
Unscramble, Parts of Speech, HangMouse, Crossword Puzzle, WordSearch