Natural Speller and Illuminations year 1

 I was originally going to use Logic of English this year which includes spelling but once again changed plans at the last minute. I purchased Illuminations Year 1 to compliment Mystery of History & Biblioplan. I am not using the scheduling but instead some of the curriculum.
  Natural Speller is the spelling used by Illuminations and that is what we are using this year. So far we all like this spelling program and it may be a keeper in our homeschool. This book is designed for 1rst - 8th grade. The beauty about the Illuminations is it takes the book and creates lesson plans for you.
    I made a spelling folder that on the right side pocket I place the lesson plans for the week. Last weeks spelling test Angelo missed the three words Knuckles, precise, & knocked so I added them to this weeks spelling words. I also place spelling notebooking pages & writing paper that is needed in the folder on the right side.

   Another bonus that Illuminations does besides organize your spelling lessons is use information from Mystery of History for the dictation sentences for the test. Some of my students I will have them dictate the entire sentence for the test while others just the spelling word. It depends on the student and age. If they do not write the entire sentence I will read the sentence anyway so they can hear the word being used. This especially helps if you are using homophones for them to decide on.

 There is also an answer key to the spelling lessons in the Illuminations program. I have a Spelling tab in my mom's notebook where I keep the answer keys.

Here is an example of a grade 8 spelling lesson answer key. The answers to the lessons are in bold print. I love how they learn to add suffixes etc. each week.

Since I did not purchase a Natural Speller book for each child. I made copies of the pages the lessons recommend the student to use on the left side of the folder. They typically use the same pages each week, For example how to add suffixes. So its not something I need to do weekly after the year gets started. 

 Here is Angelo working on his spelling.

 Titus displaying his taxonomy skills.  :)