Black Arrow is a wonderful book for a young man and all of the Henty books listed are very good. Fay

For some parts of the country, mostly mid-west and west there is a lunar eclipse today. We're in New England and can't see it. Oh well. Fay

The McCracken method of learning to read incorporates reading and spelling together. As they learn the early 3 letter words, she has them put them on a little lap chalk board in front of them. So for eg if learning -an words. a n _________ ____________ _______________ And then say ban and they add a b, say can and they erase the b and put a c etc, etc Eventually they write all 3 letters. Fay sorry that didn't transmit correctly

The McCracken method of learning to read incorporates reading and spelling together. As they learn the early 3 letter words, she has them put them on a little lap chalk board in front of them. So for eg if learning -an words. a n _________ ____________ _______________ And then say ban and they add a b, say can and they erase the b and put a c etc, etc Eventually they write all 3 letters. Fay

Kings Play Chess On Fine Glass Sets Fay

Mavis Beacon is a program my kids have used. It is a CD with drill that builds as you get the letters down. It's very good. Fay

What if you involved your husband and made it a dinner table discussion just to get the thing going. Sometimes husbands are better at the analytical discussions and could help out at this point. Fay

This is the title of a book by Darlene Mannix with 145 lessons with reproducible worksheets to teach the basic skills necessary for independent living. It included things like telephone skills, using money, time concepts, personal cleanliness, cooking and eating, basic first aid, etc. We have found it quite useful. Fay

Our DS son is now 15 and has a full repertoire of language with his only problem being speaking too fast so that it is hard to understand. One thing that we found very helpful at age 1 was Living Books on the computer with a touch window screen so that he could interact with the various animations available. It reads the book to him over and over as he interacts with it. We also taught him sign language (SEE-sighing exact english) and he had over 150 signs by the time he was 3. It really helped him communicate. The 3rd thing we did was to get him a sister(LOL)-by the time our daughter was 18 mos and starting to babble our son was 3 and ready to learn to speak-he and Rebecca chartered away in baby talk (which we weren't too good at) and they learned to talk together. Fay