Okay, seriously I give up...

I'm surrendering to the world of All About Spelling.  Ha!  I've written many a post about my language arts selections.  One as recently as last week.  I've also been sharing about re-vamping my homeschool and I've talked about how our homeschool didn't "feel" the way that I wanted it to.  I've always been sure that I would follow an Orton-Gillingham method of instruction for our spelling.  I've waivered back and forth between Spell to Write and Read (SWR), Phonics Road (PR), and the Writing Road to Reading (WRTR).  I finally decided on SWR.

Recently, I've been doing a lot of praying and thinking and re-evaluating my homeschool.  I have a very strong determination to make learning in the early years very simple.  I also will not require any formal school before age 6 for sure, but probably more like age 7.  That doesn't mean that my children will not be learning.  It just means that I have to make things more enticing and gentle.  I can already see that this will be especially true for my son.  

So, in re-evaluating my overall homeschool and the atmosphere of our homeschool I decided to review each individual subject.  Which, led to me reviewing our Language Arts (SWR), and I knew that it would be too much writing for my son and probably for my daughter right now.  Lots of moms tweak SWR and make it more gentle, but I decided that would be too much work.  It also still would not be as gentle as what I was hoping for, and I believe that it would not entice my children the way that I want to entice my children into learning.

I took down the All About Spelling from my shelf (unfortunately I have MANY a curriculum sitting on my shelves) ;and decided to put together the student materials to see if it would work for us.  I started with this:

and ended with this:

I have to admit that I REALLY like color coded things.  : )

Then, I put together the tiles:

I must admit that I was really impressed with how sturdy the tiles were. (This isn't all of the tiles in this picture.  )

To make a long story short I have decided to give All About Spelling a try.  Here are the reasons why:

1) I can be as gentle as I want with All About Spelling (the tiles help with this)

2) I feel comfortable with moving through the steps slowly

3) Less writing in AAS

4) Mastery based - my daughter really works best with mastery based curriculums

4) Ease of teacher use.  It's so easy that even if I wanted to seperate my children it would be much easier than SWR for me.

5) Multi-sensory for my son

6) At the end of the year they are releasing All About Reading which should be an awesome compliment to AAS for my daughter

So, although **I** would rather go through SWR for ME; it's not what is best for my CHILDREN.  Gotta keep them in mind, right?  I want my children to love learning and I think this will be the best for that.  However, keep reading to find out if that is actually true.  I'll keep you all posted. Hopefully, All About Spelling wins me over and I fall in love with it.  It is a beautiful curriculum.