We have been using Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) in our homeschool for about three years with all the children (except the twins who are too young). Although I was skeptical at first, we have great success using the program. You may read my Review of ACE English which details my thoughts about the program.
Several years ago when I first saw ACE I thought it was too simple and that it moved too slow. So I passed on it and did several other English programs that were good but would require me to teach each child individually. In our homeschool we have written some distinctives to help guide me. In those we decided that I would act as a mentor or a tutor and only directly teach a couple of group classes. ACE Paces are self teaching and therefore done independently so A.C.E. Word Building should work really well in our large homeschool.
Word Building is Accelerated Christian Education’s Spelling program. Although it also teaches vocabulary the focus of this program is to teach spelling. It is a mastery based spelling program.
What is included in A.C.E. Word Building:
- Each year has 12 self teaching workbooks for each year and covers grades 1-9
- Teacher’s Keys are purchased separately
- The program uses a variety of different exercises to facilitate learning
How we use A.C.E. Word Building:
- We first began using ACE with my oldest daughter because the books have a regular pattern and looked academically excellent.
- Then we had a child that was struggling with spelling curricula. Despite having used some great spelling programs including Building Spelling Skills and IEW’s Phonetic Zoo. Unfortunately, one of my dear daughters just wasn’t getting it. I noticed that after her second week of working on the same word list she would do MUCH better. So, I began to look for a program that allowed children to work on their words for longer then a week. Thus, I chose Word Building for her because it takes about three weeks to get through a book. This was great for a kid who needed more time with her word list for her to achieve success.
- I am really pleased with how they group the spelling words together according to their sound.
- We really enjoy the overtly Christian content in the workbooks.
Word Building by Accelerated Christian Education
In summary:
I mentioned in the text of this post that we have tried a lot of spelling programs our list of spelling programs includes not only the two mentioned but also includes Spelling Power, Sequential Spelling, R&S Spelling and others. I need to say there is nothing wrong with any of these programs other then they were not right for us. I would encourage you to research and find the right programs for you and don’t dismiss a program (like I did) that could benefit your family because it’s not someone else’s cup of tea.
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