How We Use Marie's Words

Marie's Words is a newer product on the homeschooling scene. I had seen posts, etc. about the product in blog land and on Facebook. Once seeing what the product was about I knew I really wanted to give it a try with Grace. Me and the husband visited The Great Homeschool Convention in Greenville in March of this year. Lucky for me Marie's Words has a booth and I got to meet the brother of of Marie. Of course I purchased the product and it sat on a shelf all summer. My hands and fingers were a twitching to start this product and it was very hard to wait until last week to do that. Marie's Words does come with instructions on how to use the product and other games you can use with the cards, but with me being a homeschool mom I knew I needed to tweak it a bit for our family and put our own spin on it. Marie's Words contains 550 vocabulary words to study for the ACT or SAT. You can find more information about Marie's Words on their website. First I want to say this is not a review and I did pay for this product. I just want to share how we use a wonderful little product in our home.

At the beginning of each week I give Grace 10 new words to study from the box. I found a ring to put them on (they do come pre-punched) to do so. Currently we are going in alphabetical order through the box of words. Each day Grace reviews the words and their definitions as well as how it was used in a sentence. That gives her five days to learn the words. Sometime during the week I put together a little quiz for her to take on Fridays. As of now I am only creating a matching quiz between the words and definitions and asking her to pick five words from the list to create five sentences. I was pleased to see that her first quiz went well with a score of 100. I am not a grader and typically do not grade all of her work. With this being her 9th grade year though I know I need to get some grades together for her transcript at the end of the year.

Some other activities I might start including on the quiz is putting the words in alphabetical order, creating more sentences, and maybe working with synonyms and antonyms. Working with 10 cards a week will almost see us finish the box in 1 1/2 years. At that point we will start over and do it again. I am hoping this will prepare her better for the ACT of SAT. Another item we are using for SAT prep is SAT App Quiz you can get for free on itunes.