Review: Joyful Heart Spelling Through Scripture

If you are looking for a Bible-based literacy program than look no further than Joyful Heart Spelling Through Scripture.

Joyful Heart Spelling Through Scripture is a Bible-based literacy program that follows Joyful Heart Spelling Skills. When you purchase Joyful Hearts Spelling Skills for $18, you will receive Joyful Heart Spelling Through Scripture as an additional bonus. Though, you are able to purchase the Spelling Through Scripture on its own for $4.00.

Joyful Hearts Spelling Skills is a unique spelling curriculum that incorporates God’s Word in the learning of spelling rules. It focuses on 73 spelling skills, which are learned at your child’s own pace over a two to three-year period. The ideal starting age is grades 1 through 3, though those in grades 4, who are having trouble with spelling, would also benefit from this program.

This program includes a Teacher’s Guide and Student Sheets. In the 328 page Teacher’s Guide, is a suggested 5-day program, a Teach Sheet on how to teach each skill as well as information on how to best use the program, skill cards, Bible verse study sheets and lots of optional practice ideas. The format of this guide is very clear and concise making it a breeze to follow and implement into your day.

There are also 888 student sheets that are to be completed over the life of this program. For each of the 73 spelling skills, there are 9 different activities to help reinforce learning. They are Skill to Drill, words in the Word, Build-It!, Learn the Word dictation practice, Cut It-Sort It, Color Write it!, What’s Missing?, Write it a Different Way and Show What you Know. With the variety of activities included in this program, it will appeal to all different types of learners.

This flexible Biblically-based spelling program can be tailored to match your child’s learning style making it easy to add to any homeschool schedule. Taking roughly 15 to 20 minutes per day, this program will help your child build a great understanding of essential spelling and phonics rules.  It is a well thought-out, very thorough program that will have kids wanting learning their spelling skills. It is easy to prepare, just print out, place in a binder and you are ready to go!

Joyful Heart Spelling Through Scripture is a great way to follow this program and is ideal for students in grades 4 to 7 who need practice with their literacy skills, as it is based on the knowledge that students already have a firm understanding of those skills. As part of the download, you will receive the instructions, the 27 printable passages as well as both the print, cursive and blank copywork pages.

This program consists of 27 Scripture selections that range from a few verses to entire chapters, which allows children to practice their foundational skills within the context in writing. It particularly concentrates on capitalization, spacing, spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting.

Each Scripture section is broken up into small, manageable passages that are learned over a number of days. This program uses copywork and dictation to reinforce literacy skills while incorporating the study and memorization of Scripture.

As with the program above, this one is also very flexible, allowing your child to work at his or her own pace, repeating if necessary or even pushing ahead when they are able. Again, it is easy to prepare, with only a printer, paper, binder and stationary needed. Both programs heavily rely on copywork and dictation, which require a great deal of fine motor skills. The recommended ages is a great guideline and I would recommend that be followed.

Copywork is copying a piece of well-written work onto paper or in a notebook. As your child copies the ‘perfect copy’, they are not only practicing their handwriting, they are learning about correct spacing, capitalization, punctuation and spelling as well as building their reading and vocabulary skills. 

After spending time studying and copying these Bible verses, your child then graduates to dictation. In this part of the program, you child should have studied the passage, making sure they know the correct spelling and punctuation before they write the passage while it is being dictated to them. It is a great way to review the studied passage and reinforce the spelling skills they have learnt. Once completed, they check their work against the original correct model using careful observation. This will then allow you to make the decision on whether to move onto the next passage or repeat this one.

Overall, I have found these to be very thorough programs and love that they are based on Scripture. The cost makes it extremely affordable for homeschooling families while giving your children essential literacy skills that will continue to use their entire life. With our boys being two years apart, I was still able to use it with both of them at the same time. Each boy worked to his own level, choosing their own spelling words, practicing their handwriting in their own books and helping each other in studying and memorizing the Bible passages.

During our time using Joyful Heart Spelling Through Scripture, I have seen a great improvement in our boys’ grammar, punctuation and handwriting. I love that our boys have been reading and learning Scripture while working on these skills and have seen them grow immensely.

I would definitely recommend this program to anyone who is looking for a great literacy program that also encourages children to read, study and memorize the Word of the Lord.

 

This review was written for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC, and can be found here.