So here is the breakdown on their costs... 28 - 45 min sessions (recommended 2 x a week) - $160 each 3 Progress Exams PLUS 2 Post-Therapy Follow ups at $90 Each Vision Therapy Aids Fee - $200 Unlimisted (as prescribed by Dr.) rental time of Syntonizer (light therapy unit) - $100 Pay all up front for 15% off. Make 2 payments and get 10% off. Make Four Payments (no discount) or option to go through a finance company. I did get a little info from the other Board Certified place here in Tulsa. They charge $150 a session for 45 min therapy sessions. Do not know other costs. They do 32 Sessions always. No we have not had any OT Evals. My oldest son has and I can call the place we went through to see if they could get Middle son in soon. I like the "world is our Oyster"!! We are actually planning to hit Saint Louis for a week or so so I may have to look into that. 🙂

Yes, we did start with his reading issues I posted on the other board and you've been such a great help. Thank you!! I actually was recommended to this forum and The Well Trained Mind by my Aunt In Law who's sons are all in their 20's and I was talking over these issues with her the other day and the advice I'm getting and she actually thinks you might be the person that helped her out on her several years back with one of her sons and his issues. He would have been older middle school into high school at that time. Anyways, thanks again. In one sense it is good to know that my mommy gut was right and that it isn't a completely "strong-willed" "knocking heads issue". However, then there is the "wow there is a legitimate problem to tackle". I know this feeling from when I was first diagnosed with my CHD's 9 yrs back at age 26. I can make the payments happen if necessary. I just wanted to make sure that it IS necessary, which it sounds like it. We just sold our "dream home" we built out in the country to have a smaller base home here in Tulsa, OK so we could start traveling semi-fulltime in our Class C. We have been planning to leave out on a longer leg at the end of June/first of July and not come back til October. I discussed this with the therapist and she recommended getting as many weeks in before we leave and continuing the in home work while gone and resume when we come back. Since we are in complete control over our schedules and plans I can change them to stay home and get in all the therapy first, however, the boys and especially this DC are very invested in us hitting the road and pushing it out much more will really sting. As for payment, they had multiple options on how to pay. You just get a 15% "discount" if you pay for all the recommended sessions up front. There is at least one other Board Certified therapist here in Tulsa I can check prices with but when I filled out their online form a few weeks back when I was looking for someone they never called or emailed me in response to my submission. Of course, they might not have received it. There is one other person I know of in our old home town who did/does VT but she is not doing it currently and only worked 1 day a week. Her husband is a Optometrist and apparently he is referring his patients down to the person we saw this week. On a side note, as I talked with the Therapist yesterday I found out my own vision needs for "Prism" in my glasses is something similar to what my son is experiencing and we discussed later when we are home for a longer stint I may do some therapy of my own. She currently is working with a similar needs patient who is 56. So apparently I'm not too old at 35 to get some help myself.

Elijah had his Eval yesterday by the Developmental Optometrist (they had a cancellation and moved us up) and I just got home this evening from my appointment to go over the results. In a nut shell, he IS having other eye troubles that his prescription isn't covering. I'll list the specific diagnosis below. I was blown away by the cost of their facilities coverage over the recommended 28 sessions. $5000. Obviously this is important and needs to be addressed. I popped over to the aforementioned Learning Challenges board to ask this question but I'll post it here as well. Is this something I can deal with solely at home or possible go through our local school system? Or do I need to bite that expensive bullet? Convergence Excess Pursuit Eye Movement Dysfunction Saccadic Eye Movement Dysfunction Spasm of Accommodation bilateral Paresis of accommodation bilateral Myopia bilateral

Hello. I had posted on the General Education Board many weeks back about some struggles with my middle son who is 7 and has been in "1st Grade" this last year. After getting some advice there I felt lead to start with an evaluation by Board Certified Developmental Optometrist. DC is already in eyeglasses and has been since he was 4 yrs old. We had his evaluation at the Developmental Optometrist yesterday and I just got home from meeting with her for the results today. They diagnosed him with the following conditions... Convergence Excess Pursuit Eye Movement Dysfunction Saccadic Eye Movement Dysfunction Spasm of Accommodation bilateral Paresis of accommodation bilateral Myopia bilateral My question is in regards to the Vision Therapy. They are recommending 28 sessions and their whole deal with end up costing close to $5,000. We have Medi-share and I will call tomorrow to see if that is something they will reimburse. Is this something that I can provide solely at home? Or possibly have provided through our local school system?

Yes we do already have AAR Level 1 and also the Pre-Reading (for DS#3 who turned 5 back in April). I had originally bought AAR Level to do with the DC I've been asking about back 2 years ago when he was heading into Kindergarten and we were planning to Homeschool. However, the week before school started we switched gears and put both older boys into the Private School. That's where he had the exposure to Abeka. Since returning them to home this school year I have only had him read from the story books and have not even touched the teacher's manual or the activity book. I realize now that that was a huge mistake. To be honest it has been an overwhelming year for us all and since it is such a fight to get him to do anything that isn't his idea I have let him play and just be ALOT and focused more on my 4th grader. My own personal home education was very lacking in grammar and L.A. in general. I now my Mom struggled to teach me to read (probably because I have dyslexia issues) and she still to this day doesn't see any need for children to "learn to diagram sentences". Working through MCT Island levels with my oldest DS has caused a giant light bulb in my brain to light up and I'm now finally in my 30's understanding parts of speech/sentences. That said, I still personally struggle with spelling issues, reading new to me words. I've also had to watch when I check my oldest DS's spelling because I have on occasion visually swapped letters in a word that he wrote correctly but my brain insists on swapping the letters around. Those moments are not terribly often but have happened and have happened more than once. For those reasons I feel a little "out of my league" when dealing with any curriculum that is not holding my through the process. Now Math, Science & Music. I'm good there and feel like I can handle coming up with my own stuff. I have a degree in Music and taught private piano, violin and guitar for 9 yrs before taking a break due to kids and my health.

Actually he passed all 3 sections. According to Ms. Barton on the video as well as the Student Screening Answer Sheet Task A is allowed a Maximum Wrong of 1 (he got 0 wrong), Task B is allowed Maximum Wrong of 1 (which he got 1 wrong), and Task C is allowed a Maximum of "Correct After Repeat of 6 (he got 3 in that column) and Maximum Wrong of 2 (he got 1 wrong). Ms Barton explained at the end of the screening video that if they got MORE than the maximum allowed they had failed the screening and were not ready to start. Yes I did do the Tutor Screening Test before administering the screening to DC. I'm waiting to see how things go with the Vision Screening before taking the step to decide whether we will pursue more evals and I think the facility we are going to might be a good source of referral to someone in our area. He has had a complete hearing eval last summer. I requested one set up during his well visit last year because I had some concerns. It was administered by an Auditory Specialist in our area. The only thing she found was he had pressure on his ear drums probably from allergy induces fluid build up. I have been supplementing B12 daily for several years now via a special compound prescription that also includes Vit D3 and a special form of methylfolate.

Here's a quick update. I really appreciate everyone's advice on here. I have made DC an appointment with a Tulsa area Developmental Optometrist that is board-certified in Pediatrics/Vision Therapy & Rehabilitation. We are scheduled for that evaluation on June 18th. I was just now able to administer the Barton Screening with DC and he had none wrong on Task A, 1 wrong on Task B and 3 "Correct After Repeat" and 1 Wrong on Task C. I struggle with hearing sounds well myself so I did my best to judge his ability to reproduce the sounds in Task C while having him watch Ms. Barton administer Task C. Over all the only outlying thing I noticed was when he pulled down the squares on Task A he didn't do it in a "sentence like" order and he counted his squares after pulling them down from right to left. However, I don't think that really is a problem just something I noticed. I plan to re-start reading with him after our Eval in a few weeks. Would you all recommend I look at re-starting AAR or look at the Barton Lessons?

He does tell me he "can't read" and is currently telling me he never wants to learn to read and that he won't need to read even in the future "adult years". He is our "doom and gloom" boy though and is so contrary he'll tell you the sky is red if you mention how blue it is today. He can go from being over the moon happy to over the moon sad or mad.

I have CHDs that were repaired as an adult back in 2011 via Open Heart Surgery and also have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. So I do supplement many things due to deficiencies. I just really struggled mentally after my hysterectomy from the anesthesia for a few months.

What is an SLD writing diagnosis? It sounds like my first call is to find and get an appointment with a developmental optometrist. I'm assuming they are not like our Pediatric Ophthalmologist. Our insurance is through Medi-Care so we will be paying for it out of pocket. Unless there is some things I can run through our Tulsa OK PS?

Yes, he is biologically mine and the strong willed-ness he gets from his Dad. 😂 (seriously and we all recognize it) As for my dyslexia, I was home schooled myself and my parents were anti-modern medicine so while we all recognized it I was never "properly tested". I even reverted to writing words backwards again for a few months after my hysterectomy last year. I mostly know just mix words up in sentences when talking but struggled with writing letters and whole words backwards as a child. Spelling has always been a struggle for me as well. Middle son does actually really well with spelling and his enunciation has been "off the charts" since he was very very young. He was speaking in clear 6+ worded sentences prior to age 2. When he was a little over 2 yrs old he stood on a stump of a tree on our property and declared "this is SPECTACULAR!" very clear and distinct for any adult to understand. He is currently spelling 4 letter words with blends and as long as a word doesn't "violate" any known to him phonics rule he can spell verbally just fine. So the more I ponder him over the more I come back to it being a written and a willingness issue.

I'm not really sure I'd say he "did well". He did it because that is what the did there at some point he when forced to read he can up to a certain level. It more of the extreme unwillingness to even do any reading that we are struggling with the most.

Hello! I'm looking for some help, suggestions and ideas in regards to my middle son. He had his Kindergarten year at a, then local, small Christian School. They used Abeka curriculum and he was "reading" at the end of the year. He is emotionally behind his age but was "academically" the smartest in the class but is VERY Strong Willed and never wants to do school. Fast forward to this 1st grade year. He did the first 6 wks at the same school til we moved and we transitioned into homeschooling. I already had AAR level 1 on hand but instead of implementing the whole program like I should have I just had him read 1 story out of the readers every day we did school. It is consistently pulling teeth to get him to read to me. I finally have "let it go" for a few weeks because once we got to the 3rd reader I realized he needs to revisit blending consonants. However, he still insists he has NO desire to read AT ALL. He does wear eyeglasses (nearsighted and an astigmatism) and has since he was 4 almost 5. He just turned 7 in April so he is younger for his grade but not terribly. He has a high vocabulary and is very good with his Spelling Workout level A book (half way through). He does write his numbers backwards often (not place value as much because we've worked on his grasp of place value) and commonly writes letters backwards as well as mixing up his upper and lower case usage. I'm being to wonder if he is struggling with some form of dyslexia. I know I have struggled with dyslexia since a child but no one ever really did anything about it for me. Any help is much appreciated! I'm feeling very lost with this particular child.

Thanks everyone for all the imput and suggestions! We have decided to continue on with MCT but drop the Poetics part. I am getting the Writing & Rhetoric as an additional for our oldest. We are going with MOH as our core History for the coming year. My oldest has requested to study Geology so I'm now just looking for a Geology course/book/guide.

We have the SOTW books that I used to supplement the year we did CC in 2nd grade. It's not what I'm looking for as a whole curriculum (kinda bores my boys) but since I own them I can add them when needing a supplement. However, trying to keep our on the road times lighter they will likely not make it into the RV.

I will definitely look into that MOH. Thanks for the suggestion. I was wondering if I could put both MCT and W&R together. We already do something similar in Math with BA online and SM. I'm reading over the Town levels now and wondering if we could skip Grammar Town and move just into Paragraph Town. I like that they have the Practice books to diagram and he doesn't have much trouble with them however, we have had NO practice actually making his own expect for the few pages in Sentence Island where they have you make your own based off the supplied words. I'm thinking by adding W&R we could get more of actually writing his own into our curriculum.

All great questions...I'm not sure if I can say if MCT is "working" for us or not. It was what finally made Grammar make sense to ME personally. My oldest though has grasped L.A. really well from the beginning (words from both his Kindergarten, 1st and 3rd grade teachers) so he seems to understand MCT faster than I have as we have worked through it. I feel like we could keep it on but as of right now I'd say it isn't "challenging" at all to him. I came across the Writing & Rhetoric yesterday while searching around Cathy Duffy's site and sent it over to my Husband. He really liked what he read about it. So I'm really considering it as a change option. We are Christians but also believe "Old Earth" and I don't feel like every single subject needs to have a Biblical influence, i.e Spelling. We will be traveling more in the next year plus and doing alot of our school work out of a Class C RV so I'm trying to streamline my resources to not carry extra weight whenever possible. He doesn't like to write physically much and loves learning resources that are Audio/Visual. We have watched a ton of Wild Kratts and they have watched ALL of the Liberty's Kids series during lunch time this Spring Semester. We use Spelling Work Out for our spelling and he likes it more than Abeka which they used at the Private School he attended. I'd love to find the Day-By-Day schedule for MCT you mentioned. I plan to use the Island levels with our 2nd grader next year.

I struggled with dyslexia from a child and never really understood or had much instruction in grammar. Fast forward to adult me using MCT with my oldest and I finally understand Grammar. 🙂

I am struggling with the thought that my oldest will be 10 in the summer and "5th" grade level in the coming "school year". This last year we have had several changes and I've been really lax since Nov/Dec. Our boys all started the school year and a small private school in our old home town. We moved about 30 mins away at the end of Sept and pulled them out. We tried one of the K12 styled online programs in our state but by Thanksgiving I was fed up with their approach. We dropped that and took a small break. ODS has been doing B.A. online 3A and has finished all Singapore Math 3A & 3B and we are reviewing throuth 4A currently. We had started MCT back in 2 grade when we brought him home for that year and so we picked back up in January where we had left off. He's finished Grammar Island and we are half way through Sentence Island and he's about half way through practice Island. I'm just not sure if we want to move on to the Town Levels in the fall. I kinda feel like I need something more structured and something that my husband can see that we are actively working through. I will have a "2nd" 7 yr old and a 5 yr old that's starting to do some work, mostly we will be doing AAR level 1 with him and Singapore Math. I am also at a complete loss on how to approach history and science. I tend to enjoy more of a relaxed approach (we mostly be watching Liberty's Kids and reading Rush Revere) but my husband is more of a "schedule and check list" personality. So any suggestions on L.A., History and Science to look at that would be good for a super distract-able 5th grade boy that will be traveling the country with his family this next year would be hightly appreciated!

Has anyone on this board used the Singapore Science Curriculum? Thoughts on it? Could it be something that a 1st grader could follow along with a 4th grader or would I need to do each one in their separate "levels"? I've currently been eyeing either Apologia or Dr. Dave's so we could just go by interest but someone I know threw Singapore out as another option. We use Singapore for our Math and are very happy with it.

Big (((Hugs)))! I had one 6 yrs ago and my "sweet" husband keptp throwing popcorn at me while I was drinking the prep drink. 🙄 The procedure itself was great because you get to sleep through it all. Martin Short says in his Autobiography that he, Steve Martin and a couple of other "colleges" now get together each year and have their colonoscopies on the same day so they can do the prep together and play poker. 😆

Good to hear! Hashi's is my diagnosis as well and I run low in the past on Vit D, Ferritin, B12s, in such. Sounds like you are on a good "digging deeper" path. If you haven't already read it yet I Highly recommend Dr. Izabella Wentz's books and blog/website for anyone with Hashi's. And for the record I had get heart episodes periodically even when my labs are more normal to hypo range. Although not anything like when I swung super hyper earlier this year and had to tit-rate my dose down twice.

Okay, I'm new and I don't have the time to read everyone's responses but feel lead to share a bit of my personal history. I've seen the updated lab results and while Anemia seems to be a certain thing I don't believe you should rule that as the root cause just yet. Has she seen a Cardiologist? Did they run a FULL Thyroid panel? A bit of where I'm coming from...I am now 35 yrs old and my health history is complicated to say the least. Growing up I only saw Chiropractor from ages 18 months to age 23. I had several things that popped up in my pre-teens/teens that mostly were ignored. Such as, constant fatigue, running unexplained fevers for weeks on end, heart palpitations, a goiter. At 17 my chiro ran blood work that showed my Thyroid levels in the Hypo range but after a few "adjustments" and no one else said anything. I also tried to explain to him once how my heart did these weird things and I was laughed off saying "your too young to have heart issues". Fast forward past alot of things and after my first born son turned 1 I finally got a MD to listen and was not only Diagnosed with an Autoimmune Thyroid condition but they also ordered an Echo-cardiogram due to this new Dr. picking up a faint heart murmur. I was quickly called back with the news that I had a couple of major heart defects. I had Open Heart Surgery a few months later to repair some of the problems. Now eight plus years later and learning alot about my body and thyroid health I know how much my thyroid levels can effect my heart health as well as how my autoimmune issues effect other areas such as anemia, low Vit D levels, B12 issues, nerve issues. Keep asking questions like you are and don't ignore anything. The little stuff does matter and I've had multiple medical personal try to brush me off and I've had to learn to keep pushing when I need to and that includes firing some on my medical team and finding those who will take the time to fully listen to me and take the time to needed to help me stay as heathly as possible.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I feel like I've an idea now on what I'll do for the time being after our holiday travels are over. 🙂

I am wondering if anyone has used Beast Academy online only as a supplement to another core curriculum? In our case it would be along side Singapore Standards. Thanks, Sarah