[I don't think I can do this-emotional rant]

(((hugs)))

Does her handwriting always look like a four year olds, or was that just because of the bad day? There may be something going on neurologically (like the medication changes! Or something else) that could make handwriting particularly difficult for your daughter.  I disagree with those who say handwriting isn't important. Handwriting is both affected by the brain, and it can affect the brain. Some handwriting programs function almost like vision and occupational therapy for helping to develop eye-hand coordination. 

 

Have you spoken to her neurologist regarding the difficulty she has with handwriting? If the difficulty is new with the medication changes, I'd mention it to the neurologist. (Looking back, a close relative's deteriorating handwriting showed she had a neurological disease before the disease was identified by doctors.)  If the problem's not new, has she ever been evaluated for dysgraphia? If so, what were the recommendations?

 

For some 9 year olds with learning challenges, copy work is simply overwhelming! You might consider a handwriting program that focused more on created shapes that are used in handwriting and address writing words through something else. For handwriting, I like a program called Callirobics http://callirobics.com/ that's set to music. We started out the school year again this year repeating that program even for my neuro-typical grammar school children before moving onto more standard handwriting workbooks. We still play the cd when we do handwriting with other handwriting workbooks because the music helps achieve a certain rhythm to handwriting.

 

Copy work can be really, really hard for some kids!  What with all the changes to her medications, it may be that you need to set handwriting aside until that's stabilized.  And once it's stabilized, if handwriting is still a challenge, I'd suggest you have her evaluated for dysgraphia and possibly other learning challenges. In the meantime, you might look at Callirobics.

 

----

edited

[How many main meals do you have in your everyday repertoire?]

I can't count how many.  I do a lot of mix & match.  For example: pasta--various shapes (spaghetti, linguini, rigatoni, macaroni, etc.) served with sauce. Sauce options include red with ground turkey/beef, red with meatballs, red with peppers & sausage, red with chicken, wine sauce with chicken, wine sauce with chicken and mushrooms, white or cheddar cheese sauce, cheese sauce with bacon, cheese sauce with chicken, white sauce with chicken and herbs, white sauce with seafood. Herbs and spices vary on my mood and garden.  Some variation of the chicken, seafood and sauces are served with rice. 

 

I similarly mix and match with Mexican style cooking. Tacos or enchiladas made from beef, chicken, pork, seafood or cheese, served with green or red sauce. About once a month or so, I do something similar with Indian food using yellow or green curry and mixing in whatever vegetables we have on hand.

 

Then there's soups. Ham bone with beans/split peas/lentils, chicken or turkey noodle (or rice) with vegetables, beef barley, gumbo, etc. etc. Soup is a great way to use leftovers.

 

When the weather is warm, we'll have some bbq, hamburger, chicken, ribs, steaks, hot dogs, etc. (with bbq appropriate side dishes.)

 

I go through periods of time when I'll get on some kick or another, and we'll have something a few times, then hardly ever again. Quiche is my newest (old) kick. I hadn't made it in years, and then last month I made it three times, and I want it again soon.

 

Plus, I serve bread and salads with most meals. My children like bread. I have one or two picky eaters, and since I sometimes make some unusual things for children, I usually offer sandwiches as a back-up option. Now I'm wondering if they'd be less picky if I didn't make such a large variety of foods.

[and now...bedrest]

Praying for you and your family.

[Shopping spree for independent kindergartener]

This thread mentions some of our favorite toys! I'm late to this thread, but I wanted to add that somewhere in the assortment of education toys should be characters (dolls, action figures, little plastic or wood people, fairies, etc.) for a child to practice language skills.  Playmobil has some great sets that my five year old enjoys.

[What are the laws on who can legally declare someone a dependent?]

My daughter only turned 18 half way through the year. We paid 100% of her bills for all but the last two weeks of the year. We are still paying for her health insurance and such. We paid for her college this fall and only got a partial refund.

 

Thing is, she wants financial aid for next year and says she is going to do everything without us. So her plan to have someone else...like a birth relative who has little to no income, claim her on their taxes. ...

 

I'm not sure of the answer from a tax perspective, but you might want to ask someone at a college financial aid department about if she'd qualify for aid differently if she was declared someone else's dependent on taxes.  From my understanding, parents' income is considered when evaluating if a student qualifies for financial help, even if the parents provides no financial support to the student. (There are a few exceptions, such as member of the military or married students.)

[Quick! Putting together a silly Grown-Up Kit for dd's 18th birthday--need ideas]

Big girl panties, so she can put them on.

Duct tape, because it fixes almost anything.

A pen, which is mightier than a sword.

A little black dress, because it's a wardrobe staple for a grown up woman.

[Oh, no! Are the later Foerster texts less good than his Alg 1? Other recommendations?]

We're using Foerster's Algebra II/Trig book and find it's fine. We haven't used the Calculus book yet.

[How Do You Pronounce Nutella]

I voted "nut ella" because I keep the u short, but I pronounce the /t/ on the front of the second syllable. 

 

My husband says New tella. That's just wrong, wrong, wrong! I can't believe a commercial for the product would mispronounce it as terribly as my husband does.  The company needs to find a new advertising agency! Ew!  Something that delicious simply can not possibly make anyone say, "Ew."

 

Our youngest calls it "Tin nella".     

 

[A question for Barton users...]

Did I hold off? No. I added other things along with Barton. A large part my reasoning was our family's needs that my son have something to do while I was working with my other children. Many of the things he did ended up being duplications of things we later did in Barton, but many weren't.  I didn't use the writing program that Barton specifically recommends (Institute for Excellence in Writing) until much later than when Barton--and that program was fantastic. We're on level 10 of Barton.  My son is in eighth grade and we've been using Barton for many years.  It took us far longer to get to this point than it likely will take your child, especially if you follow the suggestion to set aside other grammar programs and focus on Barton.

 

As to the transcripts question--I don't know.  I have another son who's a sophomore in high school and I'm trying to figure out how to manage his transcript.  He attended a brick and mortar high school his freshman year, and that high school did not use any programs to teach grammar or spelling. They assumed the students already had those skills, so their language arts focused primarily on literature. Strong writing, grammar and spelling skills were expected but not taught. At a high school level, some schools separate English class, using materials to teach vocabulary and writing skills, (which in your case could include materials like Barton and Excellence in Writing) from a Literature class, where students read and discuss quality literature.  You might accommodate your son's dyslexia and dysgraphia in a Literature class through books on tape and help with writing through typing all assignments with help from spell checker and grammar checker. High school students who get help from a tutor don't have to mark tutoring lessons marked on their transcripts, so if your son's transcript may not even need to mention anything about remediation if you weren't trying to give him high school credit for that.  He could earn English credit through a Literature class, and by next year, he might be far enough in Barton to manage a Literature class with accommodations, especially if he's 2e.

 

I'm trying to figure out Literature vs. English class with or without Barton too. My high school son got up to level 8 but he never finished the entire Barton program. I think it would help him if we did, especially as I now see what levels 9 &10 cover. We've found other high school materials that we really like, and Barton could be supplemented in with those materials. But that gets back to what I wrote in the paragraph above--when we add in more materials beyond Barton, it takes longer to get through Barton--and if I put in Barton, it will take away from some time we spend on other things. This son's freshman year he didn't receive any help with grammar or writing, outside of having me help him with his papers (or having teachers mark up the papers with red ink whenever he didn't accept my help.) A 2e kid who has been remediated or partly remediated with a good program may be able to handle a regular high school literature course, especially if he gets help with writing or is allowed to demonstrate his understanding of the materials in other ways. My son actually did pretty well in his freshman year literature class. As he's back to homeschooling, I plan to mark his transcripts with one grade for 10th grade Literature and another for 10th grade English--and I'm wondering how to fit Barton in with all of that. I don't plan to mark anything on his high school transcript as remedial. If I decide to use Barton instead of another vocabulary and writing programs next year, I'll likely just give him a grade for Literature.

[Catholic mommas w/big families: How do you feel about what the Pope said?]

BTW, I agree with you that the pope's "rabbit" and "3 children" comments are taken out of context, and were not actually a reflection of his own beliefs.  IMO, there are people from liberal and traditional ideologies that would like to peg this pope as a revolutionary.

 

Keep it real. 

 

I saw right away that his "three children" comment was taken out of context, but it's really hard to see any context in which the "rabbit" comments are appropriate, (unless one is talking about breeding animals.) The pope's words comparing human reproduction to rabbit reproduction don't look taken out of context. They look like a poor word choice--which he probably knew at the time to be a poor word choice because he included the phrase "I'm sorry" along as he used those words.

 

English is not his first language. Maybe he wasn't able to quickly think of a way to say in English what he was trying to say. That's as generous as I can be regarding that comment.  I've got hop along now to tend to my little bunnies.

[Back to the drawing board: Dyslexia/Dysgraphia/APD/]

You started the post with "It's the end of January."  It's January and you're homeschooling.  Mid to late winter presents challenges all of their own for many homeschoolers even without learning challenges like dyslexia, dysgraphia or APD.

 

In winter, one of my primary goals is to stay warm and survive until spring.  Hibernation sounds good. Staying home in front of a warm fire with a cup of tea or cocoa, reading a wonderful book out loud to my children helps me survive. Winter can be an excellent time to focus the JOYS of reading. Does his APD prevent him from enjoying books read out loud to him? Find a book that you think he'd love,  something that's a little above his reading level but not above his comprehension level, and read it TO him.  Not textbooks but real literature.  Perhaps start with a short story that can be read in one sitting.

 

I'd re-think about any co-op class that's not working out well. Too much information thrown all at once can confuse matters for people with dyslexia. However, on the pro-side for going to co-op, it's great that your friend from co-op loaned you her Barton levels!  That (and friendships with other homeschoolers) may make continuing to go to co-op worthwhile.  When it comes to co-op classes, the reality is that dyslexia, dysgraphia and APD make group learning more difficult. 

 

Learning disabilities make learning and sometimes life in general more difficult, which can leave both child and parent may be more prone to being depressed. On top of all that, it's January. One book that you may want to look at reading is "Winter Blues" http://www.amazon.com/Winter-Blues-Fourth-Everything-Affective/dp/1609181859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421868338&sr=8-1&keywords=winter+blues .

 

 

 

 

[Catholic mommas w/big families: How do you feel about what the Pope said?]

He included the phrase "excuse me" in his statement. I'm trying to excuse what he said. I found it mildly offensive, but I'm also encouraged by some of the other things he said on his visit to the Philippines. 

[Teaching dyslexics as they get older]

 Do you have suggestions for now or as she enters high school for more learning that is video or audio based?

 

 

Here's one suggestion: if you have Netflix or Amazon Prime or even just the internet or a library card, you can access some great documentaries and a variety educational shows. There are some really fantastic programs that can be used to supplement your other educational materials. Nova helps to better illustrate many of the science principles covered in our textbooks.  Next week, my high school sophomore's Shakespeare studies will include an old movie version of a Shakespeare play. Some of the best teachers I remember included appropriate movies as part of our classroom lessons. It takes a little planning to find the right shows, but that's not nearly as teacher-intense as many of the other methods appropriate for dyslexic students, and it's easier now than it has ever been to find quality audio-visual teaching aids.

[When to pursue a second opinion]

Since the testing was done by a graduate student, there is probably a licensed professional supervising and signing off on that student's work.  I don't think it would be a "second opinion" per se if you were to talk over the situation with how the testing went with the licensed professional who has to sign off on the student's work. Before going to another clinic (and paying yet more $$$), I'd talk over the situation with the licensed professional who oversees the student who did the testing.

 

There's a reason why states license the professionals who do this type of testing.  A graduate student is not yet a licensed professional. Talk to someone at that clinic who is.

[Nutrition - Homemade Oatmeal Raisin Cookies vs. Commercial Granola Bars]

Make the cookie dough, but instead of individual cookies, put the dough into a oblong pan.  Bake until done.  Cut into bars.  Viola--oatmeal granola bars!

[Would you move or stay put?]

I wouldn't want to move to a more expensive yet smaller home that's not as nice. Maybe I'll downsize one day, but not at this point in my life. I'd stay rather than move, BUT I'd also cut back on activities that require lots of driving to different areas.  If you are always going somewhere else for church, scouts and all those other activities, it's hard to find time for activities closer to home where you could make friends with people who live near you. 

 

 

 

 

 

[DD7 has trouble distinguishing sounds p, d, and t at the end of words]

The Lindamood-Bell LiPS program is great for this kind of stuff. ... I love LiPS!

 

LiPS is a wonderful program! Now this old Veggie Tales song is running through my head.

[Raising Other People's Children - WWYD?]

She lives with her parents.  Has only Skyped with the grandparents since she was a few months old. That is one reason why this is happening I guess.  To build a bond between the grandparents and her, and between us and her.

 

This is a cultural phenomenon.  I agree that in the American context it is totally not understandable (believe me I am still having trouble getting my head around it.)  But in this cultural context it is accepted and common.  We have a number of family members where the parents are living/working in the US and the children are being raised by grandparents in India. 

 

You are right, we should be prepared for this to be traumatic.

 

What do people in their culture expect? Is it customary that the visiting child gets treated like any of other the children in the home--or is it customary to treat the visiting child somewhat differently? Given the words they use to describe "older father, older mother" it sounds like they expect the child to be treated like any other child within the family. Maybe that's not so much of an issue when everyone involved is from the same culture if the parenting styles within the family is similar. 

 

You're an in-law from another culture. In American culture this type of thing rarely happens, unless someone has died or is somehow otherwise incapable of raising their own child. Does your husband's family know much about your culture?

 

If it were me, I'd worry far less about my three year old niece living with me for a few months than I'd worry about an extended visit from my mother-in-law and father-in-law. If you get along with your mother-in-law and if you speak the same language, perhaps she can answer some of your questions on what's to be expected from their cultural perspective. 

 

If you can all come to an agreement and share the similar expectations, this will probably work better.    

[curricula for severely memory impaired?]

Yes. We see a neuropsychologist a couple times a year. We do the tests, and he gives us recommendations on how to tailor his learning to his needs. His best recc is to break up work into small segments, and repetition of concepts, and using visual, real life examples. 

 You might want to check out Remedia Publications. They produce tons of special education materials. The material we've used were very basic, with the learning broken into small segments. They also have a variety of things beyond workbooks that might help provide some visual examples. This Remedia product stood out to me as something that you might find helpful: http://www.rempub.com/math/math-curriculum-mastery-visual-learning-guides-gr-3 .

 

We have used some Remedia materials, but not for math. We use Singapore Math-- which moves rather quickly--but Singapore Math does offer lots and lots of math manipulatives. Manipulatives can help students to visualize the various concepts, plus they can be fun. You might explore to see if they can be incorporated into whatever you use for math. http://www.singaporemath.com/Homeschool_Manipulatives_s/61.htm

 

Another suggestion, apart from school materials, is a book called "Help For Memory" from Lingua Systems. http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10038 It teaches techniques to help those with memory impairments. 

[Winter blues and light therapy]

I don't use mine anymore, but I sit in front of a sunny window often. We use fish oils with vit D and I make myself and the children go outside. When doing those other things, I don't feel I need that light.

---edit, to add that snow cover reflects more sunlight. I have a harder time when there's no snow. I think i bought my light a year with little snow.

[Audiology or Speech Pathology]

Personally, I'd choose slp. I find it more interesting, plus you say it takes more time for audiology with less pay. Your background as an ESL teacher could blend with speech to help reduce accents and speech challenges--and that might even be a way to work around the teaching certificate requirements.

 

I have no idea about how either field gets paid for research, although both fields has it.

[Re-using dishes and utensils]

Sharing utensils--gross.

Cups, mugs and glasses--gross if intentional, although mistakes happen with people refilling or picking up wrong one.

Plates or bowls okay IF the items previously eaten on said dishes were dry, (perhaps leaving only a few crumbs) and IF if we were out of clean plates.

Sharing with spouse, not as gross generally.

[anyone own a vacation home and rent it out?]

^{There's a tv show on HGTV my husband and I have been watching with that very premise--buy a house and rent it out to pay for it.  The host's math usually says the people need to rent it out around 16-18 weeks-usually during peak season--to make it work.} 

 

^{I'm sick of winter too and the idea of seasonal migration is appealing.}

[Good curricula for dyslexia]

Okay, I found the book and re-read what Davis wrote about autism and dyslexia. 

Page 66 "As a child, I had a problem called autism.  It is like super-dyslexia, only with more severe disorientation triggered by auditory stimuli.  At the age of twelve, I still hadn't learned the alphabet. Even the "Alphabet Song" couldn't get me past the letter G...." He goes on to write about how he made models of things from clay in his backyard and how he one day started making letters out of clay. That's how he learned the alphabet. He says later on page 110 that until age 13 he was considered retarded and that he would be classified as autistic today.

 

It stood out to me how he compared dyslexia with autism, but way back when he was a child both those labels were defined differently than they are today. The word itself, "dyslexia" translated means "difficulty reading" (dys=difficulty + lexia=reading) and some applied that word to anyone having difficulty reading. He claims to have had difficulty learning to reading, but there was something more going on with him too, which he acknowledges.  He reminds me of people I know with Asperger's, which is yet another diagnosis/label that's changed. Other far more reputable sources have mentioned that autism and dyslexia can run together in families.

 

For whatever it's worth, he tries to help people learn to read based off what he found helped him. Some of his ideas are definitely odd, and his theories certainly don't match up to the current understanding of dyslexia and various other learning disorders. His background in in engineering, not education, psychology or medicine. It's been a long time since I read that book and tried his methods, and it didn't particularly help my son. In fact, it delayed my son the help he needed, but his book wasn't the only thing that delayed getting the proper help.  We'd seen a speech therapist at our school district for evaluation, and she missed what was going on too. I only mentioned that I tried the Davis methods after the original poster mention how her sister had used Davis methods. I'm glad that I didn't spend more than some time, the cost of a book and the cost of some clay on it.

[Good curricula for dyslexia]

My mom had a Davis trained tutor work with my dyslexic sister years ago, after she had learned to get by in reading but still struggled in school and life (she wasn't diagnosed til junior high). I see the value in what they do, and I may incorporate some of those methods, but with my limited knowledge, I think other methods are more comprehensive of all of the needs. My mom felt like it helped my sister immensely, and I think it did. She is still a slow reader and college work is difficult for her, though, but that may be par for the course for a dyslexic.

 

I tried Davis techniques too. His book was the first one I read about dyslexia, and then one of the first people I called when I suspected dyslexia was a Davis tutor.  He was nice, but he told me my son was too young--which in retrospect saved me a great deal of money by not using his tutoring services. I tried some of those Davis techniques on our own, so my son built the alphabet in clay over and over again repeatedly. We made little clay sculptures of common words. My son's reading didn't really improve, but he did learn how to form the letters of the alphabet.  I tried that, along with SWR and other things before turning to Barton and LiPS.

 

Davis has an interesting approach that may work for some--if they have a strong enough visual skills. His methods try to bypass the phonological problems found in many dyslexics by teaching words by sight. Building letters, words and images with clay is multi-sensory and can be useful technique for some. Davis methods rely heavily on visual strengths, (which many dyslexics are gifted in, hence the name of his book). It does not remediate the weaknesses necessary to learn phonics. He does advocates making sure the student has an understanding of the meaning of common words, which is a good thing for some struggling readers that some methods miss. Somewhere in the book Davis says that he was labeled autistic as a child, which he equated with an extreme form of dyslexia.

 

If you read his book, take what he says with a proverbial grain of salt. He developed his method based on his own personal experience of what worked for him--and he had strong visual-spatial* skills. (* Spell check kept trying to make that say "special"-since I misspelled spatial by using a "c" . Those types of visual skills are special skills.) Not every dyslexic person has strong visual skills, however, by the current definitions of dyslexia, people with dyslexia have shortcomings in their ability to hear sounds in words.  Davis methods doesn't correct that; it simply tries to work around it by relying on memorizing words and connecting those words to some picture in the head. Davis methods also tries to assure the child has an understanding of what the words mean. 

 

I go back and fourth on what I think of Davis' methods.  It didn't really help my son much, but people with a strong visual memory may get by with simply memorizing lots and lots of words.  That's basically the notion behind teaching words by sight that many schools used for decades, but Davis at least throws in some multi-sensory techniques and a few other things with teaching words by sight. Gifted people may have the ability to memorize tens of thousands of words, and recognizing words by sight is needed for fluency. With all that said, what I found most helpful from Davis is his book title, "The Gift of Dyslexia". Teaching methods aside, he presents a viewpoint that some of us need to hear--that underneath these challenges, there may lie some real gifts and talents.