Spelling City review

My children have had limited access to internet play time as a general rule. If they've ever wanted to play a game on the computer, it's either been through the library or a disc I've purchased. However, we've been given a wonderful opportunity to try out an online spelling site through The Old Schoolhouse review team, and it's time to let you all know how we've done with it!

Spelling City is an online resource to help encourage children to learn their spelling, definitions and uses. It also offer teaching resources such as Dolch words, compound words, literature based word lists, and homophones.

Once you have selected your word list, you can choose to select "Teach Me". A real person will pronounce the word, spell it and then put it into a sentence for you. It's the same for the "Test Me" section.

Spelling City is as simple as you like for free, or get more creative and explore the Premium Membership for $24.99U.S.  We have had access to the Premium Membership, which allowed me to enter the children's names and then track their progress with words used, and those where spelling problems existed. We also had access to premium games. For a complete view of what the Premium Membership offers, have a look at this page. (*I've been informed that the Premium Membership will be upgraded to included more wonderful features to help with vocabulary and phonics.)

The children enjoyed using this site. The games for Mariposa's age level were pretty much right on par with where she was at for this time, although she did find the typing of sentences tricky, having not learnt any keyboard skills yet. She could practice the week's spelling words in various forms of games. "Hang Mouse" was one of her favourites; although she would sometimes deliberately type a word incorrectly to see what would happen to poor mousie! ☺

The newer parts of the site called "Student Writing Practice" and "Paragraph Writing Practice" are more suitable for Maestro, as it would be also for older children. Of course, this would mean more time and proficiency using the keyboard, so keep that in mind.  I can see this being a really good tool for further work in vocabulary building, especially in science and literature.

If I had even younger children just beginning to learn spelling, then the "Beginning Spelling Lists" using phonics would be ideal.

Should you feel a little lost navigating the site, they do offer training videos for teachers and parents. I found these to be very clear, so you needn't feel unsure exploring the site with this information.

Once signed up to the site, some encouraging emails will be sent through to you. They want to know if you're having any troubles, so wonderful customer service is a plus. Newsletters are also sent out with any news on additional coming features (see * above).

NB - I received this item from TOS for the purpose of review. There is no other compensation and the opinions are my own. Thank you to TOS and Spelling City for the use of this product. If you'd like to read further reviews on this product, please click HERE.