first of all I want to say I love horizons reading and phonics. This is my first year using their spelling curriculum, and I was pretty disappointed. There are parts that I really really like about it, and parts that I think really need to be worked on. It's designed to be used absolutely five days a week at least! And the first of the week will be super heavy. The rest of the week could be maybe 15 minutes a day.

I really like how they try and start introducing the child to little bits of creative writing by having the child use as many of the spelling words as they can for the week and write two sentences. I like how it's a little religious, I like how it has cursive as well as print writing.

my main problem with it is how they have divided the work for the week. I still would recommend it, you'll just have to go through it and try and figure out how to best make it work for your family.

For example:

for 1 week there is a check up on last week, a pretest for this upcoming week with practice for words missed, then there is a page for the words of the week where they write two sentences, and then practiced the new spelling words. Then there is four days of practice for the words, and spelling test. And then there is also one worksheet for homework. Then you repeat this every.

we are doing the review test and the new test for one day, (~30-45min), then the words for the week and the first days worksheet for day 2 ((30-45min), then 1-2 worksheets and homework sheet for day 3, and day 4 has either 1-2 worksheets as are remaining, and the test.

I can't say I would necessarily buy it again, but I also haven't found any spelling curriculum I'm terribly pleased with.

If you just want your child to have some activities to do with words they've already learned then this is good. Its not too challenging and I would recommend Wordly Wise or something similar to it.