Yes. :grouphug: I hate fun. It's so very not fun--for me.:tongue_smilie: The child who wants the most fun is never satisfied. It's never enough. Whatever I do, it's never good enough, fun enough, enough enough. Same old, same old, "He got more than me" ("Not me--I--it's suppose to be, 'He got more than I did' --and he didn't.":mad:) Good for you for not loosing your temper! Wish I could say the same. I made the child who started crying about not get enough go write spelling words ten times, then when he complained I bumped it to twenty. Was that enough, now? No more fun!!! :smash:

I love red and I don't know your house, but yeah, I think there's a strong chance it would look overwhelming. Or mismatched, depending on the shades. But...it might look good. Somewhere on the net there's a paint company's website that lets you upload pictures of your house and try out "virtual painting" of their colors. Try out the paint colors on a picture first.

I just wrote a long reply and then lost it. Now I don't have much time to respond. First of all :grouphug: Secondly, check out the screening for both students and tutors at Barton website http://www.bartonreading.com/ My son had a similar problem with several sounds, including /f/ and /th/. After he failed the Barton screening, I went through Lindamood's LiPS program with him. http://www.ganderpublishing.com/LiPS/ I bought the manual and some of the manipulatives. This program teaches how to distinguish similar sounds from each other by noticing how the body makes those sounds. For instance, the /f/ and /th/ sound are both made by forcing air but the tongue is in different positions. While I had tried materials appropriate for people with dyslexia, my son made little progress in reading until we went through the LiPS program. Hope that helps.

:hurray: Good work! I love reading other's success stories. They give me inspiration!

I found the book "What Shall I Write?" helped with the problem of not knowing how to start a creative writing assignment. It starts the story with an interesting sentence or two, then the child must finish the story. http://www.ganderpublishing.com/search.php?mode=search&page=1

May I come to your pity party? My son with dyslexia used to absolutely hate it when I read out loud when he was a small child. I didn't discover he had auditory processing problems until much later and then his earlier behavior made more sense. Anyway, I still read out loud, but not as much as I hoped. Our curriculum is certainly not literature based. Eventually my son learned to appreciate listening to stories. He likes them now. I think it is very important for children to listen to stories read out loud, even if it means something else has to give. My son sruggles with reading, but I want him to know that it's worth aquiring the skill of literacy to read good books. I choose children's classics to read aloud. We read a chapter or two in the afternoon on most days, taking a short break between novels. I read shorter stories at bedtime. Yet...homeschooling this child is different than what I hoped. May I participate in your pity party, please?

Thanks very much for sharing! Love this story!

I have not told my 8 year old son. For one thing, he has never been formally tested. For another, I hope that through the right teaching techniques, my son's brain might eventually form the brain connections so that his current reading problems won't be life-long problems. I appreciate Georgia's previous comment about the brain being pliable and changable. My son is still young. I am not convinced that his reading problems and brain patterns are irreversible at this point. Although his progress is slow, he is making progress. Since we homeschool, he is as not subject to daily embarrassment or constant comparrison with others. At this point, I see no reason to tell my son he has dyslexia.

:iagree:Corraleno's previously commented about visual-spacial learners. The book "Upside Down Brilliance" about visual-spacial learners used the term "twice gifted" for the learning difficulties some--but not all--visual spacial learners encounter. Whatever one calls problems with reading, spelling and/or writing, we should try to discover how to teach these things to our children best. There are some different teaching methods that may work better with visual spacial learners. However, not all reading problems are caused by the visual spacial abilities--and sometimes visual-spacial learners may have some other underlying problems that interfear with their learning. My son is a visual learner who ALSO could not distinguish the different sounds within words and thought some different but similiar sounds were the same sound.

I would definately recommend you read "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Davis. That book might not cover every form of dyslexia or reading problems, but it probably describes what your daughter is experiencing. He writes about the "thinking in pictures" ability that can interfear with processing words in reading because many words cannot be easily pictured. Several sources that say dyslexia tends to run in families with both autistic and architectual/engineering/creative type people. The ability to think spacially and flip around pictures in the head is great ability for an architect, but when letters and words flip around it can cause confussion in reading. "The Gift of Dyslexia" doesn't covers auditory processing much (if at all), so check out information on Dyslexia that covers auditory processing too. If she's omitting sounds within words, she might not detect the individual sounds. When we speak, we squish all the sounds together into words and some people can't hear the individual sounds. I suggest you evaluate your daughter's auditory processing skills and work to develop that. The website of Barton Reading and Spelling has a screen to identify those who needs lots of work with auditory processing before begining their program, (like my son), but the first level of the Barton program still works exclusively on auditory processing. Auditory processing skills are often lacking in people prone to dyslexia. I'm sorry that the evaluation from your school district didn't address your concerns about your daughter. Many children fall between the cracks because their reading problems aren't severe enough to qualify for special education, but the traditional methods used in schools do not help some children reach their full potential. Be grateful for homeschooling!

I like The Gift of Dyslexia, but agree with Lizzy Bee that it probably only applies to a certain group of people with dyslexia. Same can be said for many books about dyslexia. One book that I highly recommend is "Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It". http://www.amazon.com/Children-Cant-Read-What-About/dp/0684853566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263830121&sr=8-1 The author delves into several reasons behind difficulty with reading. Rather than focussing on the diagnosis of "dyslexia" (which means difficulty reading), the book does a great job of discussing various underlying causes of reading problems. More importantly, after looking at the various underlying causes of reading problems, she offers advice on how to remediate the problems to teach the child how to read.

Hello. I don't have much time to post right now, but here are a couple of thoughts that I hope might help. Dyeslexia often starts to show up in third grade, but it's often missed in schools or regarded as something else. Check out signs of dyslexia linked here http://www.bartonreading.com/dys.html#signs There are other similar lists linked on other treads and other websites. Also don't be so sure that your son knows what familiar words really mean--especially if he's not grasping the "big picture" often. Many familiar words are difficult to picture and/or sound just like other common words. Words we take for granted that children understand (like articles and pronouns) can confuse some children, perhaps particularly those children prone to more concrete thinking. Nanci Bell (and others) calls those big picture ideas the "gestalt," There are ways to teach children how to "get it" There are some special education materials to help teach understanding of the big picture. Understanding vocabulary words and establishing a strong mental picture are two of the key elements. Some people have difficulty with abstract thinking--even at older ages. There are ways to work on developing abstract thinking, for instance by trying to make the abstract more "tangible" and concrete. Your son sounds like a very sweet child. I know it can be a bit scary to think your child might have dyslexia or other learning issues. We have a distinct advantage as homeschoolers to be able to teach our children in ways they can understand. :grouphug:

I hadn't heard of the Ideachain program before now. I did a web search and it looks good. Even if you don't use the program, their website has some helpful information and explainations about what can go wrong in the comprehension process during reading. Someone else mentioned vocabulary. Most of the reading comprehension books I have ever used involve dictionaries and defining words. The V&V program has a thick book called Vanilla Vocabulary; it defines of many common words and helps create mental pictures with those words. Knowing the meaning of words is critical to reading comprehension. For example, most of you reading this post here can probably read the non-sense words "zud" "babbing". But the sentence "Kim was babbing with the zud" escapes our comprehension even though we can read it. Someone might be able to read words, but if they don't know what the words mean, they won't understand what they read.

:) And thank YOU for sharing your experience. Good work on teading your son to read.:thumbup1: I find it very encouraging.

Hi Debbie-- A couple suggestions: Before encountering a struggling reader, I worked on reading comprehension with my non-dyslexic children through materials developed that specifically asks comprehension questions. (We use religious based stories from Catholic Heritage Curricula.) After each story or chapter, there are comprehension questions to answer. I also found a secular source that developed educational materials to improve comprehension for struggling learners. Lindamood-Bell has a program called Visualizing and Verbalizing, which is suppose to help children form a mental picture as they read to improve comprehension. I didn't buy the whole program, but I bought a few materials, including a book from a series called "Imagine That!". Here's a link with more information that might be helpful: http://www.ganderpublishing.com/Visualizing-and-Verbalizing.html Since reading through some of the Visualizating and Verbalizing materials, I have come to realize that some authors do a much better good job of helping to paint mental pictures with words. As your child is in forth grade, I suggest E. B. White's "Trumpet of the Swan" might be an enjoyable book for her to read--or better yet, for you to both read aloud and discuss together. It's very descriptive, and highly descriptive language seems to help form those mental pictures that helps improve reading comprehension.

Hello, I don't have any insight for you but I have a question. I'm relatively new to using Bartons (ending level 2/starting level 3). So far I like it, but I would like to learn from your experience, if you don't mind sharing. :bigear: Did you use the spelling tests that Barton's offers on the Tutor support? Or did you just do spelling as part of the regular program? Were you working with only Barton for the last few years? Did your son ever hear spelling rules and worked with er/ow, etc. phonograms from other sources? Like you, I question what's the best thing to do. I like Barton's program with all the scripting and support they offer for me. My son's phonemic awareness wasn't strong enough at first so we did part of LiPS. Between Lips and other things I had tried before Barton, my son has already encountered all the phonograms. I see now that Barton doesn't introduce some phonograms until much later. Since I liked the Lindamood LiPS program so much, I bought some of Lindamood-Bell Seeing Stars materials and we're working on those too. I figure that if my son were in public school plus receiving Barton tutoring, he'd be hearing multiple sources of this information and doing more school work so I mixed some other things while working with Bartons. Anyways....just hoping you can offer me some insight from your experience on how you worked with Bartons since you found the spelling wasn't enough for your son.

I'm so glad you posted this question and for the responses! My dh wants to go to DisneyWorld with our family. If we go, this guide sounds like a great book to get.

I am. I'm hanging out on the computer too while dh watched the game.

Hi Sherry, I don't know the answer to all your questions. I do know of a company that sells educational material for special needs children called Gander Publishing. I use some of their materials. Here's a link to browse their material by subject: http://www.ganderpublishing.com/Browse-by-Subject.html With a second grade reading level while doing math at grade level, is your brother diagnosed with dyslexia? Even if he doesn't have an official diagnosis of dyslexia, if he's reading that far below grade level it might be worth checking out some materials developed for people with reading problems. Whatever the cause, it sounds like your brother has problems with reading. My son doesn't have an official diagnosis of dyslexia, but I use material developed for people with dyslexia. He's making better progress in his reading now. Companies like Gander Publishers and Barton Reading and Spelling http://www.bartonreading.com/ have materials and programs developed to help with people with reading problems. They can be used by homeschoolers or public school special education teachers. Your mom might want to check out some of the thread here discussing what programs various homeschool moms here use for their special needs children.

My dyslexic son also has a short short-term memory. I can't remember which book I read with suggestions for improving short term memory but we do few of the activities recommended and seems to help a bit. The book told of some remarkable progress documented in improving memory. One idea was playing memory games like "I went on a picnic and brought an __(item beginning with a)__" Next person says what other person said and adds an item with b, and so on. Repetitive songs with gestures was also recommended to improve memory (some I were familiar from girl scouts.) Another game recommended was to give the child instructions for 2 or 3 funny small tasks, have the child repeat them and do the tasks in order. Then the child gets to give you tasks. Play it over days, weeks or months and increase the number of tasks over time. Thanks for triggering my memory! We haven't resumed those memory activities since our Christmas break.

If you think your child might be a visual-spatial learner, maybe try something like this: http://www.multiplication.com/order.htm The Upside-Down Brilliance website recommended those books. They have some really different pneumonic devices to help remember multiplication facts. Also maybe help your child how to quickly figure out the facts she doesn't know based on the facts she does know. i.e. 7 x 10= 70 (most find tens easy) 7 x 9= 70-7 =63

You sorta answered your own question. Why would we want our children to watch a cartoon "hero" who is that dumb? Children often imitate what they watch on tv.

We aren't the weirdos--Sponge Bob and the people who come up with some of the crazy media for kids are the weirds ones. If THEY weren't so weird, our job as parents would be easier. But I'm not about to take the easy path and let total strangers have access to influencing my children any way they wish. Yes, I restrict what my children watch.