I have 3 kids going into 3rd grade. My twin 9 year olds have Auditory Processing Disorder and ADHD one is more severe than the other. They are both struggling with reading. Both are very visual learners. My 8 year old is an Auditory learner and reads on a 4th grade level. They ALL have phenomenal reading comprehension levels due to audiobooks since they were babies (thank the lord!) I'm currently using AAR Level 2 for reading, and attempting AAS Level 1 for spelling... my APD kids are having issues phonetically spelling words of course. I'm looking for a good solid grammar and spelling curriculum as I have neglected this area of their education focusing more on getting them to read on grade level. Thank you!

Preface: My son is 18 and severe inattentive ADD but REFUSES to take meds. I had him tested a couple of years ago and they said that he was dyslexic not ADD but turns out he isn't. He most likely has Auditory Processing disorder as well as ADD (as his younger siblings do). But since they told him that he isn't ADD he says he doesn't need meds. His regular psych was furious to say the least! He took 9th grade in public school and this year he is taking 2 classes at the high school. My son wants to take an extra year of high school but go BACK to high school full time as a senior. We just moved to a new county and he says he wants to go to PS to make friends. He hated 9th grade and wanted to come home midway through but for some reason thinks now will be different. I am trying to get him to go to community college next year as a transition year. I do not want to teach him next year. I could hardly get him to do anything this year between him sneaking off with his phone (I kept it more often than not but still got crappy work) or just not getting anything done. I am OVER it! (hopefully someone can relate) So my issue is I had him take a practice compass test yesterday. He COMPLETELY failed the reading placement test. Now this is a kid that was reading on a college level in 5th grade and his vocabulary was upper high school when tested. He made honor roll in PS BUT was on meds. He was in PS until 8th grade, Homeschooled 8th went back for 9th and home the rest of high school. Now he acts like he can't do anything. I think I am losing my mind. What in the H*** do I do with this kid?!?? Let him go to public next year? Or work on the issues I see when he took the practice test and prepare him for it like an ACT or SAT? I talked to him about CC and High school yesterday and he seems to think he can go in to the HS and take a test and automatically be a senior. I tried to explain that they didn't have to accept anything that he has done for the last 3 years if they didn't want to. I went over 2 of the reading comprehension tests yesterday with him and what he said was " And you think I am ready for this?"

Just to clarify, I wasn't saying I "can't" teach 1st grade math because I am not a math person. And I wasn't trying to classify my kids as math-minded or not just giving some information. For some people math just comes easy and they grasp the subject very quickly and easily. Others like myself have to work at it. Not an issue just a difference. I do math, reading and writing individually with my kids. We combine Science and History. I am not opposed to using different curricula for each kid. I have 2 very visual and 1 auditory learner. We did the first couple of pages for MM and they seemed to like it just as much as singapore. I use MM to remediate my teenage son who is weak in math skills from PS. I had read so much about MUS being fantastic so that is why I am wishy-washy.... I am familiar with MM but not MUS but if it is great then I will most certainly use that instead.. KWIM? I started out with Saxon for my older son and it was a bomb. I jumped curriculum a few times and settled on MM and that is working really well for him.

Yes 2 6 year olds (they will be 7 next month) and a 5 year old.

We just finished up Singapore K with my 3 littles. I heard that Singapore was much more difficult starting in 1st so I decided to change curriculum. I am not math minded at ALL and I only have 1 who might be. I own Math Mammoth 1st grade and MUS Alpha. I CAN NOT choose between the two. Can someone please help me?? If it helps I have B/G twins that will soon be 7 and a 5 year old DD who is on track with her siblings. My DS has Sensory Processing Disorder and is being tested for Auditory Processing in Nov. One DD seems to be a little math minded and my youngest just picks up everything quickly. Thanks for any help you can give me! Cindy

So I decided on something completely different that I found on a simply charlotte mason board. http://shop.peterson-handwriting.com/product.sc?productId=109&categoryId=-1 I have 2 righties and a lefty. I purchased the e-book, the guide to teaching cursive (which is absolutely fabulous) and their book about teaching leftys. :) Thanks for all your help!

My kids (3 of them) just finished up HWOT K book but now I am really wanting them to learn cursive. Is there a good cursive book out there for young kids? I know there are websites but all three of them are STUCK on having a BOOK like their HWOT book..... Thanks Cindy

I need some science suggestions for 3 first graders. We did Essential Science Intro to Science last year and would like to do Biology this year. Although I liked Essential Science I didn't love it. Their new Living books curriculum looks interesting but for $40 for 1/2 year a little more than I want to pay right now. So with that said.... Any suggestions for fun Biology??

Is there a good non-expensive curriculum out there that teaches study skills for high schoolers? I know about The Teaching Company's DVD's but they are to expensive and my library doesn't have them. Thanks in advance Cindy

Thanks everyone. I was freaking for nothing... They were still 5 on Sept 30th last year. It was the wording that got me and maybe the lateness of the night, but I was thinking if they were 6 before Sept of THIS year they had to do end of year testing. Silly, I know. Thanks so much for all your very informative and speedy responses. I knew I could count on you ladies for the answer!!

I just realized my K'ers need to be tested. For some reason I had it in my head that they didn't need to be tested until the end of 1st grade. They are finishing K this year but are 6 and by VA law they must be tested if they are 6. What the heck is tested on the CAT for K'ers? Neither of mine can read yet. One is blending the other is not. They know all their sounds and can count to 40 as well as simple addition and subtraction. They both have expressive language disorder and one also has Receptive and Sensory Processing disorder. My test scores have to be in by August 1!! I could cry!

My 3 little ones will be first grade in the fall. We will be following the WTM suggestions to do Ancients. I like the looks of Discover the Scriptures for our HS scripture study. My question is would or have you done Old Testament during your year with Ancients or would you start with the Book of Mormon study? I also have a 17 year old and next year in Seminary they are studying the BofM so I was kind of leaning towards all of us working on it together but... you know.... Decisions Decisions! :)

My DS (6, 7 in the fall) has Sensory Processing Disorder; Mild/Moderate Receptive Language Disorder;Severe Expressive Language Disorder. He is receiving speech and occupational therapy services. I have been trying to teach him to read for the past 2 years at his insistance. He cries because he can't read and his sisters can. I have tried many, many different programs (HOP, PAL, OPGTR, Blend Phonics, Reading Reflex, now we are on Barton Reading and Spelling Level 1 I bought for his older brother that is dyslexic) His problem is is short term memory can not hold a third sound, which is my best guess. He knows ALL the individual sounds inside and out but when it comes to blending them he can't get the third sound. B-A-G becomes B-A-T or some other random sound. He is a very visual learner and he can learn sight words or at least the shape of the word. I am at my wits end on how to help him. I have given breaks, different programs etc. He loves to be read to and loves books and he so wants to read! Any suggestions on how to get him to grasp that third sound? Any programs, curriculum, websites, etc that you suggest would be appreciated! I am a researcher at heart and love to learn about new things so send them on! :) When I had him tested i was told to watch for an LD so I am aware that it is possible he is dyslexic. Thanks!

Just an update: I thought about it last night and made some phone calls this morning. The initial place only had 30 min sessions and they wanted to see him twice a week (co-op of $60 each time). I called Childrens Hospital this morning and they do different billing and hour long sessions. The co-pay for services is $30 each visit and they also offer OT and that has a copay of $30 as well (we are currently doing OT at a facility at $60 a visit). That is seriously a load off my mind!

I just called my insurance company. Cole is $660 to his $2500 cap but he can only receive 30 speech visits a year. They have no help. :(

Hi, I just got back from my son's speech therapy evaluation meeting. My son's has SPD and mixed receptive/expressive language disorder. They want to see him 2 days a week and he also has OT once a week. In addition, he has services at the local school that is 45 mins a week with his twin sister. His twin sister had an eval done as well and they want to see her once a week. With all that said, My co-op through my insurance for services is $60 a visit with a cap per person of $2500 and family of $5000 a year. With all of these visits a week it would add up to: $240 a week. I can NOT afford that. The school says they would give my son 1.5 hours a week of speech and my daughter 1 hour of speech if they were in school full time but since we homeschool (they are 6 and doing K this year) they are only eligible for 18 hours a year. Is there something out there to help with co-op assistance for therapies? That amount is CRAZY!!! We live in VA. Unfortunetly, my husband does not have a flex spending acct nor an option to get one.

Hi, I just got back from my son's speech therapy evaluation meeting. My son's has SPD and mixed receptive/expressive language disorder. They want to see him 2 days a week and he also has OT once a week. In addition, he has services at the local school that is 45 mins a week with his twin sister. His twin sister had an eval done as well and they want to see her once a week. With all that said, My co-op for services is $60 a visit with a cap per person of $2500 and family of $5000 a year. With all of these visits a week it would add up to: $240 a week. I can NOT afford that. The school says they would give my son 1.5 hours a week of speech and my daughter 1 hour of speech if they were in school full time but since we homeschool (they are 6 and doing K this year) they are only eligible for 18 hours a year. Is there something out there to help with co-op assistance for therapies? That amount is CRAZY!!! We live in VA.

The iditarod started today. The kids and I are watching the documentary on Netflix since this years race isn't on tv. Any suggestions for studying the race this week with 3 k'ers, 3rd grader and a 17 year old as well as their interested parents. :)

Reading reflex is great!!

Ok I need to remediate my 17 year old in math. He can do addition and subtraction but has no mental math and counts on his fingers, can do multiplication and division but has trouble with double digit mutiplication and division with fraction remainders. He can NOT do fractions at all. I did the MUS placement tests and they said start back at Alpha level but he can do the addition facts and he gets really bored with it. He HATES math anyway so that doesn't help. Plus I can't afford to buy every level to just pick a couple of things out to work on. How have others gone about remediating older children? Do you go through every lesson? I was looking at Math Mammoth for my younger kids since they are using singapore essentials for K can I use that for remediation? It is cheaper. Thanks for any information! Cindy

I did the evaluation for WWE that was recommended on my 17 year old son (he is classified as a "slow learner", was in PS until 8th and missing ALOT of information so we are remediating) and he can not narrate or do correct punctuation for the dictation. How would you use WWE 1 for a 17 year old? would you do two lessons a day or how would you pace it for remediation? We are currently using Analytical grammar as well.

We are currently using Singapore Essentials K and are in the last half of book B. I want to switch to MUS. I have already purchased Alpha and in looking at the workbook for singapore the two might overlap. Should I go ahead and switch to Alpha or would you finish out the essentials workbook and then do Alpha? My kids are 4.5 (very advanced for her age, catches on faster than her 6 year old siblings) and twin 6 year olds (boy/girl).

My oldest son is 17 and can read fine. He has good phonic awareness, can read at age level, can spell fine but he can not remember what he reads. I have just started V/V with him and I purchased the language wise book to read. Does anyone have a recommendation for testing reading comprehension and giving a correlating grade that I can give to him and to my tutoring students that is fairly accurate? (I am starting to tutor 4 students for free in March) I would like to test listening comprehension as well as silent reading comprehension. Also does anyone have any programs or recommendations for addressing that for my students and my son?

My 17 year old son was just tested and found to be in the "slow learner" category. He has weaknesses in reading comprehension, writing and math. He was in PS until 8th. We have been doing IEW for 2 years. He can not create an original complete sentence that makes sense if it is longer than 5 words. I have been modeling, suggested, been his scribe etc and am having a hard time. On the testing he could not come up with any sentences with a given word (he scored on the .01 percentile). I need some ideas on how to help him understand word relations and creating a complete sentences and then move on to paragraphs. He is to the point of shutting down when faced with writing (came home from PS like that). I need to remediate back to creating sentence I suppose. Any suggestions? Narration & dictation? Start with Writing with Ease?? Thanks

I am a reading curriculum junkie and a researcher at heart. I have 3 children I am teaching to read. My 4.5 year old is reading cvc words but my 6 year old DS (has expressive/receptive language disorder) has to have a picture association (reading sight words, extremely visual learner) and my 6 year old DD whom I believe also have expressive/receptive language disorder, is reading cvc words. I started using PAL last year but felt my kids were learning to many sight words. I switched over to HOP K and did the whole book. I didn't feel that it stuck with them. Went back to PAL and again worried about sight words. Now I am using Reading Reflex. My son has trouble with the Auditory processing lesson but as soon as I whip out the picture from the word building lesson he can build the words all day. The girls can both do the word building and auditory processing lessons fine and we are working on the word lists. But here is my problem. I keep doubting what I am doing and switching programs. Now I am thinking of switching to OPGTR even though I found that and 100 EZ lessons SO boring!! My DH is not 100% for homeschooling next year and I feel pressure to get them reading. And then to add to it, I am am in church today and ALL of the kids in their class (5-6 year olds) that attend PS are reading (some better than others). So help me pick ONE program!!! I was reading WTM last night and they talk about RR for remediating older kids, phonics pathways and OPGTR. I don't want to buy another curriculum so AAR is out. I do have access to OPGTR and phonics pathways if necessary. Thanks!!