I have a son with a speech delay. I know how hard, very hard it is to pick up that phone and call early intervention. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. None of my friends supported me. They all told me about kids who didn't talk and told me to read "The Einstein Syndrome". I felt like I was somehow betraying my son when I called. Looking back, it was one of the best things I ever did. And I say that as a mom whose kid got a lousy initial eval. They told me he was prob. autistic. I knew they were wrong but got the therapy anyway. It turns out he has a motor problem. He is almost 6 and gets speech, OT and PT. He is a happy, sweet little boy. He just needed the speech therapy to help him tell us what he wanted to say. You are doing the right thing. Speech therapy is pretty fun for kids. We had only great therapists from Early Intervention. The therapy continued through the school system when he turned four but it was still home based. Now that he is old enough for kindergarten in my state (NY) I have to take him to the school for his therapy. So far, it has been easy and everyone has been great.

I used Reading Reflex with my first and I loved it. I still love it. But, it wasn't a good fit for my second. After 9 months of no progress I spoke to my friend who originally recommended RR and is also a reading tutor. She suggested ETC as an alternative. So far, so good. I am planning on adding in RR again when he has made a little more progress. I do think RR is a great program, it just wasn't providing the support my son needed for the transtion to the advanced code.

I am sorry. How the heck did my kid get over to your house? I have a dawdler. Oh boy, do I ever. The doodles..the careless errors. Ergh. Anyway, I handle it a couple ways. My son is older (10 yrs) and so YMMV. We do math first thing in the morning. That seems to make a difference. I also don't ever let his dawdle throw our day. If he takes two hours to do his math then I guess we have a long school day. it's up to him. I stay close by. I don't ever walk away for more than a few mins. That is just asking for trouble. I have recently started frequently checking his answers, before he is finished with his whole worksheet. That way, if he is making a (stupid) er..careless error we can catch it before he makes it more than once. That was a big one. I am embarassed to say this but I give him a little treat for every question without doodles and careless errors. It doesn't always work. For my eldest, the dawdle isn't due to the work being easy. He is a 5th grader and doing 5th grade Sinapore and 4th grade MEP. It is due to the fact that he only rarely visits this reality. I am pretty sure his real life involves many more hobbits and elves and LEPricons and Greek Gods and other such things. Our house is only a place to visit for food. And math.

I found the book 'You Are Your Child's First Teacher' to be a great intro to waldorf. Yes, it is written for parents of littles, but I think it is still worth a glance. It is often available in libraries as well as used.

Thanks! That was very helpful. We just started with ETC after stalling with Reading Reflex. This gave me a lot to think about. I have all 8 books and we are almost done with number2. I didn't buy any of the 'half' books but will if I think he needs the extra time.

Neil Postman

we did it last year as our 4th grade history. We had a great year.

For first grade for both my boys I use FLL for grammar and waited until second grade to start WWE. When I do start WWE I start with the first grade year but a year behind. Neither boy /has good enough hand writing to really do copy work etc in first grade. My eldest is now a 5th grader working through 4th grade WWE. It is just fine. It is also buying us some time for SWB to get done with the next level of writing books. tick..tick!

I am very interested in attending a conference but what you posted seems marketed to fundamentalist Christians. I would not feel comfortable attending. I could attend the one in Philly but I won't.

I feel your pain. It was taking my son, 10 and about to be a 5th grader, 90mins to finish a 20 question kumon workbook page. For us, we used the free downloadable game 'times attack' It was like a math miracle. In two days he went from taking 90 mins for that worksheet to 15 mins. He retained his accuracy but he learned to be automatic and to keep focus. I kept drilling him, we used flashcards, I tried to be as positive as possible but nothing worked like a math computer game. :001_huh:

We finished FLL this year and plan to start (I think) with Growing with Grammar. I was just going to start with grade 5 (my son's grade) but now that I look at the TOC I am not sure. Does anyone have any insight about this? After 4 years with FLL he already knows the rules of capitalization and the types of sentences. I am worried that the level 5 will be too repetitive for him. Maybe it doesn't matter and I should just cut the kid a break? and while I am at it... does anyone happen to have a time machine handy so I can loan it to SWB so she can go back and write that logic stage grammar program about three years ago? That would really solve all my problems.