Last February, Kenny and I attended a Classical Homeschooling conference at a local classical education tutoring center. We had always been drawn to the classical approach of educating, but this conference sealed our fate as classical-homeschoolers.

At one of the talks we attended by a headmaster of a classical academy in New England, I learned of a learn-to-read program called "Spell to Write and Read" that their school used on the K-3rd grade level. What intrigued me was when she said, "we teach cursive to kindergartners before they're taught to do manuscript as it greatly elliminates any tendency towards dyslexia." I'm not worried about my boys havng dyslexia...but I was shocked that cursive was being taught to students that young!

After that conference, I learned that several of my friends were also using this program in their homeschools - friends that weren't at this conference, and all of them sang its praises over and over. So, I finally researched it and looked it up. I heard of the learning curve it had for the teachers using it, and that the writers of this program have workshops to help teachers learn how to use it in their classrooms all over the west coast and the southern part of the country (not anywhere near me!) Yet, I was still really intrigued by it and my friends' recommendations kept up my interest in the program. I finally ordered it at the end of June.

When the package arrived, I tore into the box. Almost every evening and early morning after the boys are asleep, or before they wake up, I've been pouring through the material, amazed by its simplicity, AND complexity. i haven't attended a training, but I found yahoogroups list that is very active and the authors respond to your questions about the material if you ever hit a snag.

I'm very excited to begn teaching with this. The basic "jist" is that I introduce the 70 phonograms of the English language. these phonograms are the sounds that each letter makes and the sounds that mulit-letter combinations make. once these are introduced, the student memorize the spelling rules and immediately begins learning each spelling list based on mastery of phonogram memorization. 

although rowan and sawyer can bothr ead very basic books or stories, i wasn't sure how to introduce the next level to them...the curriculum that we used for Kindergarten didn't have a great phonics program for their 1st grade level (in my opinion), and i wanted to continue teaching them to read in a way that will stick with them for the rest of their lives.

A more detailed review will follow shortly as we begin lessons. I intedned to preview all of our curriculum before the start of our school year, and as summer wanes.