One my husband pushed and pushed and I slowly lost my confidence in myself. Second I had an out of control 3 year old boy that really needed more one on one time with mommy. My husband felt that he was missing out on having a mommy and considered an interuption and a nusance. Truthfully I felt awful when he would act up just to get my attention. School started taking until 4-5 pm. My daughter got an additude. My daughter was playing sick to get out of school work. routinely. I could never tell if she was sick of faking it. One daughter couldn't pay attention. I started yelling at my kids everyday because if the frustration of my husbands lack of support, my kids negative additudes and a 3 year old bugging everyone constantly. So I gave in and gave up. I am enjoying just doing preschool with my 3 year old but I do miss my girls and I feel guilt and like I didn't persevere as I should have. But I did find out everything that I was weak on in Homeschooling and all my hs strengths. My daughters both have learning disabilities that had not been diagnosed and so now I know why I was hitting brick walls. The PS put my daughter back a year which really helped decrease her stress in school. Probably why she gave me additude and playing sick school had just gotten too hard. The PS thought It was that I didn't teach phonics until I talked to their reading specialist and told her we used Spalding-that's what they use for kids behind in reading. Found out my kids knew all their phonograms and rules just didn't use them in their reading. Found out that daughter couldn't pay attention at school either. One of hubby's arguements was that there were too many distractions at home so she needed to go to school. I am praying daily that God will guide me in where the girls should be next year and which curriculum to use. I hope to bring my daughter that is a slow learner home she has bad test anxiety and so does great when she studies at home and then flunks tests and doesn't know why except she gets nervous and is afraid she will fail. My younger daughter loves school and I think she will stay there. She just wasn't finding friends that liked the same things as her at home and in the homeschool groups. Now she has found her nitch. I think that after voluteering in the girls classes I have a lot more confidence in my self as a teacher and I know now what weaknesses my girls need to improve and I know were to focus. Now I go to their school and tutor the slow kids-figure that. Now I know why they say that kids sucess at school is dependant on parent involvement with homework and at the school. Because it is the parents that make sure the kids learn what they need at home- spelling words, math facts, reading practice, editing all writing papers.--really I am still teaching them all the r's at home. I also am learning it is ok not to homeschool your kids God still will take care of them. So it doesn't have to be death that sends them to school. Still hope they can come back home It is so boring being home without them. Love preschool though for some reason I didn't think of doing it with my girls beyond crafts. Funny thing my husband want's me to HS the youngest until 2nd -3rd grade not sure I want that heart break of sending him to school but I think that I know more now and will do a better job and focus more on reading and math facts. kris Kris

Alot of the small white boards are magnitized. I would have them use the white board markers to practice writing the words too. Saves lots of time. Kris

You can email the author through the website and she is quick to answer questions. Kris

I would not skip any of the levels because they cover rules that other programs will not cover. How fast you go through level one will depend on how much phonics your child has. If they know their letters and basic blending they should move quickly. If not it will depend on how fast your child picks it up and how much time you spend on it. The program is designed to go at the speed of your child. I did not get the phonogram CD as I already know the phonograms. This is definitely a good hands on program and with the tiles it is probably more effective than workbook pages and quicker. You will dictate words and then sentences to your child so they will get writing practice. How much practice is up to you. Kris

Concering All about Spelling. It is all the phonograms and rules of SWR but in an organized manner. You learn one rule at a time and use it with a list of words. Such as learning c ck and k and when to use each letter at the beginning or end of word. You learn the rule and then use the rule to figure out the spelling of words with c ck and k. Then after you have learned them the words and rules will be reviewed until mastered and you mix up all the words learned and have kids spell different one's each day. So you first learn the rules with the words but you also later have to remember the rules to spell the words that come up following that rule. It also teaches about sylables and how to separate them. I used SWR for 1 year and it was a love hate relationship. I hated the set up and how to teach it but I loved the phonograms and the rules as I learned why words were spelled certain ways. With AAS I love the whole program. It would definitly be easier to understand that SWR because you learn rules and phonograms one at a time and learn it one step at a time. With SWR you learn all the phonograms and rules or learn from whole to part. AAS takes it from part to whole. But with the same underlying goal and rules. AAS is also spelled out word by word what to do each day and is nooret complicated and you do not have to read the book 3 times and ask many questions before you use it it is a pick it up and go. Also it has colored phonogram tiles to spell the words with so requires less writing and more hands on learning. The tiles is what my daughter loves and it helps her see the rule and she can quickly try different letters to see which one is correct with out erasing. So it is much faster. Also you have a flash card for each thing the child seeing a phonogram and saying it, then another set for mom saying phonogram and child finding it on word tile or writing it, then there are the spelling rules used, and the spelling words. So what ever the child has not mastered it goes in the review slot and is reviewed daily until mastered. Everyone in a while you go over the mastered items and put any not mastered back into review. So you go at your child's pack and do not miss any unlearned item. And you get the review of what your child needs to learn with out the extras that he doesn't need. kris

My older daughter had VT for 9 months. Insurance covered half. Now they no longer cover it. Well she did pick up her reading speed but a year later she is having problems again and they want her to do 12 1/2 hour sessions at $1000 So I did see alot of improvement with VT but it did not cure her it is a long term thing. She still reads behind grade level and changes words. She does not reverse letters anymore and most of the time doesn't read words backwards. She was obviously in pain when she was reading before VT , once I realized the problem with not being able to read was her eyes. She would glance up after each word and I thought she was ADD she was so hyperactive during school but it was just avoidance of reading and writing because it strained her eye's so much. She didn't know her eye's were not suppose to jump around so she just thought reading was really hard. So it did help alot but I would be careful to get long term eye exercise plan when you reach the end of your session because we didn't. My fault and it looks like I will pay big for it. Now I am getting ready to take my 2nd daughter. She is so different from her sister but still struggles with reading allthough she loves it and enjoys it she can only read 20-30 words a minute. She also reverses her letters all the time and even will reverse the S in her name. She also says was and saw backwards and on and no. So I guess we will pay even more for her. The doctor requires full payment ahead of time. I talked to the school nurse because they are having other testing also because of the reading difficulty and she said that some parents said VT helped alot and many said it only helped a little. It probably depends on the severity of the VT issues, how many sessions of VT and the doctor and follow up exercises. Also the vt said that often kids will have to take more VT when they go through puberty at age 13-14 because their eye's change or something. I think sometimes parents give up on VT too soon and so they don't see the progress. My dd had very slow progress for 6 months and then it finally clicked and her progress improved rapidly after that. She went from sounding out each word to reading quickly and she stopped reversing letters and words. She still has trouble sounding out big words but I think that is because she has other learning difficulties. Dyslexia or something yet to be diagnosed. Also kids have to build up their eye muscles and edurance with their newly learned skills so if you require a quick increase of to much reading and their eye's get fatigued they will go back to their old coping mechanisms. I think that is what happened to my daughter going from not much reading in HS to reading all day at PS. I'm still trying to convince my husband to do some more VT but it might be a while. At this rate it might be this summer. Kris

My oldest went to PS. He is a really smart responsible kid. But he was very frustrated especially at the JR high level with how irresponsible kids were. People would steal his pencils etc because they never brought their own to school. Ps does not encourage responsibility. They would love it but if you think you don't have time imagine how many kids each teacher has and how little they will be able to keep track of him. I have to keep track of my own PS kids by checking their grades online and watching for low grades and missed assignments. I have had my son have an F in a class and have no communication from a teacher. Even in 6th grade the teacher didn't say anything. He got an F from missed assignments. If he as LD the Ps may be a struggle and he may feel stupid compared to the kids around him. I would work on checking his work if nothing else just make sure it is done before he can do anything fun. You may have to make him sit at the kitchen table or where ever you do school with the younger kids and earn his independance by showing he is completing his work. You may want to give him one of your jobs like making dinner etc so that you will have time to check his work more carefully and explain that since you have to spend extra time making sure he gets his work done he will have to help you with your work. I would definitely be checking his work and having him fix missed problems and redoing lousy work. If he knows that he will lose fun things and will be treated like a little kid unless he shows responsibility then hopefully he will do what it takes to get his independance back. If he doesn't want his independance now I am sure he will in the future. Maybe if he is not doing his school work and messing around he can teach the younger kids as a punishment. Or I always have my kids start cleaning the house when they won't do their schoolwork. I always tell them that if they don't do their school then they will end up cleaning to make a living when they grow up so they better go work on their cleaning skills. I've had times that my son just refused to be a part of the family. We ended up removing his computer, gameboy, ipod and grounding him from his room. He had to slowly earn each item back by just being a part of the family and being positive to the people around him. I would also probably want to get your husband involved if possible. Teenage boys sometimes tend to listen a little better to their dad and some times dad doesn't let the kids get away with as much. Threatening to make the girls do their homework with my husband always gets my girls on their toes. He demands perfection and quickness. One other thing about PS and teenagers is that they tend to depend on their friends and "put up" with their family. They complain about family at school and do not depend on their family as much to meet their emotional needs. Kris

yes, my husband does not like the idea of putting her on medication and so I told him I didn't see much point in taking her to a Pediatrician unless we wanted to persue that route. Personally I think that if we don't find something else that will help with the attention problems that medication would be ok if it helped her. Because at this point her inability to focus causes her problems at school and home and she can't hardly think straight. She gets in trouble at home for not listening and it really peves my husband when he is talking right to her and she still won't listen. But I can see that it is not defiant and that she is trying her best to listen and do what she is asked. I just think that an 8 year old should be able to get ready for school etc without her mom checking on her every 3 minutes literally to make sure she is on task. She will often just sit on her bed thinking or looking in the mirror or looking at a book or doing nothing and be totally clueless that time has passed and she has things she is suppose to be doing. Also if I tell her 2 things to do , have her repeat it back to me twice then she still can't remember what the second thing is she is suppose to do by the time she gets the first thing done. Sigh, She is so sharp and quick too when she is paying attention. She is also a bit clueless socially with other kids. She doesn't understand the pecking order at school and she gets so upset when no one wants to play what she wants to play. But she will also have a group of girls over and prefer to watch tv while they play with her sister or to do her own thing while everyone else plays together. She's a tomboy. Sorry going off on a tangent. she is also rough,and physical harsh with her 3 year old brother and seems to not know how to relate to him gently. I am happy that we are finally getting to the bottom of the problems the girls have. I hope that it will be helpful for them. I also hope the youngest takes after his dad and be a little genious or even average would be great. So far even at 3 he is ahead of his sisters they were still struggling with color and shapes at 5 and he has those down and is learning his letters and numbers. Accelerated is much easier than behind in my experiance!!! Kris

Hi just another question following up the PS testing questions. The school suggested that I take my daugther who is having attention issues to a pediatrican and get diagnosed there? From my experiance it seems MD's just perscribe medication? Has anyone gone this route. What are good questions to ask and what has been your experiance. I also have an appointment with an Educational psycologist but my husband wants me to persue all routes. Krista

I do have one of my daughters- my second grader with the attention issues signed up for an appointment with a Educational psycologist. The appointment is in March. The psycologist's paperwork suggested getting what testing we could from the PS since it would be free and having the testing done privately could cost alot. So that is covered and we will see where we need to go with daughter #2 based on what the school says. I don't think they will qualify for services but both teachers wanted them tested so maybe they will. I do not like the idea of my kids being in special ed and I will really push to teach them at home if that is what comes from it. I have told my husband that if the testing shows that they will not do well in a classroom setting that I would rather that I homeschool them so they can suceed in school. They have an awsome reading specialist at their school for kids that are below grade level but not special ed. And I know they use Spalding phonics which I have used with the girls at home. I am hoping to talk to her this week. I'll let you know how it all goes.

Hi my hubby had me send my 2 girls back to PS this year. They had been HS up until this point. DD1 is in 2nd grade and having attention problems and reading way below grade level. I know she is a smart kid but she was placed in the low reading and math groups. My other daughter was placed in 4th grade couldn't handle it and was placed back into 3rd grade. But she is still struggling way below grade level in reading and low group for Math. She has always struggled to pick up each new concept. Especially with spelling and reading. So now it has been 3 months and so my husband decided they both need to be tested for learning issues and the younger daughter for the attention issues also. So has anyone been through the PS testing system and could anyone give me an idea of what to expect. Both their teachers put them into a remedial reading class this last week. Both teachers said they were glad that we asked the school to do the testing as they had been doing the ground work to request testing for both girls. I have no idea what tests they will do and what they will come up with and how long the process will take. Any advice or support would be greatly appeciated. For now I am just home with my 3 y.o. but I hope to talk my husband into letting the girls come back home next year. Especially since they really are not learning very well in a classroom enviornment. also have a 15 y.o son that is in accerated classes with kids 2 years older than him. So how did I get kids that were such opposites when it comes to accademics who knows. Kris

All about spelling. It is SWR in scripted form simplified and spelled out with colored letter tiles, Flash cards and built in review. And you can move at your own speed. I could never figure out SWR but this program uses the same phonogram system and teaches all the rules of spelling, it starts from the very beginning with alphabet sounds and includes blending 2 sounds and then 3 sounds and then from there. My kids love the colorful letter tiles. It seems to make words stick better with the colorful tiles. My dd that struggles with spelling took to the tiles and is suddenly getting her spelling words the first time instead of the 50'th. She says she can see which way looks right. It uses sight, sound, and hands on so that you can teach all the types of learners. Non of the other programs clicked because my kids needed the daily review of the flash cards and spelling rules. kris

All about spelling. My dd loved the tiles and wanted to work extra. I love that there are flashcards for the phonograms and then seprate ones for sounds. i.e. parent says sounds and child writes it down. Coming from SWR which I loved the idea but hated using it All about spelling is like taking SWR and making it easy to use and it's all spelled out what to do and it is doable easily. We also use the tiles to study spelling words first time my dd got all her spelling words correct after spelling them with the tiles twice. That never happens. Usually she missed about 70 percent or more. I can't wait to use it to teach my youngest to read. Kris

Thanks for the info. I think i will have to just see how SWR goes and go from there. Kris

I would definitly check it out because the longer you wait the farther behind he could get. With therapy they could give you ideas to get him caught up and also what you need to focus on to help him do well. I have a 2nd and 3rd grader that struggle with reading and I wish I had done something earlier. I didn't catch on until the end of 1st that my daughter was just not going to get reading unless I figured out what was wrong. She had eye therapy her eye's wern't working together. Kids don't know when something is wrong because they only know how their eye's work and don't know what others see out of their eyes. It sounds like Reading is only one of the issues he has. Your public school would probably evaluate and possible help you with speech therapy etc. I know my friend that homeschools takes her daughter in to the PS for speech therapy once a week. Testing is expensive so I am in the process of getting the PS to do most of the testing my kids need before going on to a private tester. Even the tester recomends taking them to the PS for testing to save money. The sooner you get some extra help the sooner he increase his improvement because it sounds like without it he may struggle with each new thing school throws at him and just get further behind and hate school because of the constant struggle. Kris

My son likes the Lauri puzzles we have the ones from MFW they are very simple but teach shapes, colors numbers, we also have a rice box that is a box full of rice and assorted kitchen toys and trucks. My son is a train fanatic and can play thomas the tank engine by the hour and I'm teaching his numbers and colors with them. he knows all their names and can tell me about each one. He also likes books of cars where there are just pictures of cars and trucks and he likes me to tell him the name of everything then he tells me the name and the color and we count how many trucks. This might help with verbal just naming things. My little one loves the preschool curriculum little hands to heaven. It is very simple and short and good for boys that don't want to sit and listen for more than 30 seconds. My son gets very destructive and bothers everyone when I sit down for school with my kids so we sometimes will put the rice box right next to the table or he will do the puzzles on the table, sometimes we can convince him to go play trains or cars. We also have little plastic animals that he will play with at the table. He didn't like to color until just recently. Now he only wants to color if I color with him.

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I had surgery when I was 5 for crossed eye's it did not correct it the doctor wanted to oporate again but my parents opted out. My mom had the surgery when she was a kid and it did work. I also think that if the surgery is done very young like below two that they can help the eye's to work together but not positive on that it. I felt a lot of stigma going around with at patch on one eye. I had to put up with names and stares growing up but I forget about it now. I did do vision therapy in my teenage years but my eye's were so different one is very far sighted and the other near sighted and one eye higher than the other so I ended up just seeing double. I can turn off the double vision- my eye turns in or I can turn it on if I want my eyes to look normal for pictures etc. I use one eye to read and the other to see far away weird. I can say that if my kids had lazy eye my first choice would be vision therapy and surgery second. If they were still young. I can see why they do the surgery it sucks having people not know if you are looking at them or off to side and the mean things kids can say. Luckily none of my kids have that though 2 have had issues with their eye's not tracking correctly together. The VT guy even asked me if I wanted to try VT again but I opted to just look weird. Until someone brings it up now that I am adult I don't even remember my eye's do that. kris

I've been using weight watchers and it has worked really well you can eat what ever and you just count your points. you would be amazed at how many points somethings are. Your body is use to eating the same volume of food so you really have to eat good stuff lots of fruits and vegs and low cal snacks and watch all the little things you just eat without thinking it can add up really fast. I have lost 15 so far and kept it off. It is sometimes hard staying on track but they give you 35 bonus points a week so I can go out to eat or bing a little every so often and still loose weight. It's the only think I have used that worked and that I have stuck to. It really is motivating to go to the weekly meeting with people who have lots their weight and kept it off and the ones that are loosing a hundred pounds. Most people are loosing just those extra 30-40 lbs. I was afraid I hadn't gained enough weight to loose it but I ran into half the ladies at my church there. Which really helps too.

spalding is SWR or writing road to reading there is also all about spelling which is spalding and the author has just simplified SWR and WRTR into daily lessons and teaching a new spelling rule and words that use that rule with each lesson and using colored letter tiles to teach the lessons and then writing the words in their book. They used the colored letter tiles instead of all the SWR markings. They have all the words, phonograms, rules etch on flashcard which you review daily until they are mastered and then review occasionally. It looks really a lot easier to use than SWR for the teacher and very methodical and organized. SWR was always to too many things to do and too many new rules and pages to do. No pages in All about writing you just review everything with the flash cards. Everything is learned one thing at a time so I think it might be easier to remember it. I still like SWR and will probably use it with my older dd since they are use to the markings and pages but for my youngest I think I will try the All about spelling. I learned new spelling rules about c and k just looking at the examples on their website. Wow I thought I had learned it all with SWR. Kris

I ended up holding my dd in 3rd because she just wasn't ready for 4th grade work. With her she has always struggled with each concept and with reading so she really was still doing 3rd grade work and still very challenged by it. I think it is important that they cement all the math and reading skills in Elementary or everything beyond is going to be a struggle. If the work is too hard and will make your child miserable. My dd is so happy she is doing 3rd again because 4th work was way to hard and she was stressing out. Most of her friends were either younger or older so it didn't really matter to her as long as her little sister doesn't catch up she'll be ok her little sister is now a year behind her in school but i don't think that will happen but it does make it easier to combine subjects. Kris

We have just started using Easy Grammer and the only draw back I can see is that the rules are spelled out for them and then they do a few sentences and then they do the assignment. So if a child was lazy they could just read the rules and not actually remember them for the next time. But I am having my daughter make a notebook writing down all the grammer rules she learns with examples and then we review the rules when she does a writing assignment having her look in her book for the rules and then correct her mistakes. Otherwise I think it explains grammer very clearly and makes it seem really simple and easy which is great to get my daughters confidence up. Not a lot of review, I think we will get the daily grams once we get through the rules on grammer and puctuation so that she can use the skills more. I think it is a good first grammer book to learn the rules before you get into more complicated grammer. We are using the 3rd grade book so I don't know about the older books and how they compare. Kris

I'm trying to figure out what I want to use with him before I get started as I don't want to be changing curriculums like I did with his big sisters. They both had problems learning to read and I really want to start with something that will work hopefully. I am considering Horizons or Little hands towards heaven. I have no idea how to use SWR to actually teach someone to read and I always feel a little lost and scattered when I use SWR. I really would like something that will tell me each step although I know I can slow it down if he needs it. I am hoping he will be like his brother and be able to read anything by 6 years old but going for worse case senario he could be like my daughters and struggle in 2nd and 3rd and beyond with spelling and reading. I am also looking at All about Spelling which is simular to SWR but I would also like something with activities and colors etc as he loves worksheets and just flies through them. He's 3 1/2 but he is a quick little guy. I really am not looking forward to teaching a kid to read again as it was such a struggle for my girls. For my son he just took it all in and there he was reading. So not sure which direction I should take with the last one. He is alot like his big brother but who knows if he will be that advanced or not. It's kind of odd having one kid that has skipped grades and takes all advanced classes and then have one that was held back a grade and another one that is struggling but in totally different ways. I'm just trying to do a better "more consistant" job of it with my last little one.

what type of phonics does horizons preschool and k use. I have been using SWR and I am wondering if it would completely clash or not. Also your experiance or thoughts on those programs. Thanks,