We've been having good luck with it over here! My DD was understanding exactly ZERO of the "Everyday Mathematics" curriculum at her school and bursting into tears at the mere mention of math. She added numbers randomly and was blind to place value...71 and 17 were basically the same to her. We went from that to a child who BEGGED to do math first thing in the morning. (And definitely do the game "Questions" in the car. Man, they LOVE Questions!!) Now my son offers a cautionary tale to the program; he was brought up on the K12.com math curriculum, and jumped into Fractions after we did long division. The author structures the higher math questions in such a way that he uses lower numbers in the heart of the program, but when you get to a bridge, he uses such high numbers as to be ridiculous. This is to ensure (my math-degreeed spouse points out) that the student understands the underlying concept and can apply it to Very Large Numbers. DS10 can get through a basic math curriculum on multiplication because he adds. Like a calculator. And running up against Fred, you will learn quite quickly whether or not your kid understands the underlying foundation of "What is addition? What is multiplication?" Mine does NOT, even though he appeared to have (based on previous performance in different programs). We're having to go back now and reinforce both repeated addition vs. multiplication (and the application thereof) as well as the art of word problems. We're dissecting a few Kumon workbooks to accomplish this and hope to have it remediated pretty soon. But you'll find that weak spots have a hard time hiding behind Fred. Now we're backing the fifth grader up to third grade multiplication and division so he'll stop trying to use repeated addition to solve EVERYTHING. (How many 148s can go into 2,000,000? You can't sit there and start adding 148+148+148...are we to two million yet?)

Do you have my son's twin? :) We got a diagnosis really early (1st grade) because you have to have a long paper trail in order to get any accommodations later on (like for the SATs). I went through the system as an undiagnosed dyslexic, and while I "got by," it very often wasn't a terribly pretty sight. You can also get him used to advocating for himself. I've started DS10 on that route now, because there will be many times he'll have to tell one authority figure or another why he can't/won't take the meeting notes or volunteer to make those activity posters...kwim? By the way, his clumsiness is starting to get in the way socially...if your friends all go off swimming and bike-riding and skateboarding, what do you do when you can't pass the swim test, still have training wheels, and can't balance on the skateboard? I've been waiting around for him to "outgrow it" now for far too long. This year I've gotten him in to a really good chiropractor and a physical therapist. I've seen some BIG writing gains in the last month. The DC realigns and the PT stretches; and both of them are giving him exercises to strengthen his core. I've had him in a heavy-duty daily swimming class (Swim America program, they rock!) partly to learn how to swim, partly as therapy. When that ends (next week) we'll go to weekly swimming and weekly martial arts. (More core strength stuff.) I'm crossing my fingers. It might not, but it sets the stage for acknowledging a problem very early on, and lessening the chance that some bureaucrat down the line can say, "You're trying to cheat the system. Your request is denied."

Right there with ya!! We have our DS10 in PT at the moment and Speech, but we're skipping the OT. She doesn't impress us. To be honest, we took him to a FABULOUS chiropractor (this guy doesn't pull the "come in 3x a week for .... the rest of your life" stuff that most do. He says, "We can probably fix this in...two, maybe three visits." And he's RIGHT.) and got him adjusted for the first time. I have seen BIG gains in his handwriting for the first time in six years. It's...gasp!...legible! I'm only having him write out spelling (AVKO, Sequential Spelling) lists at the moment. Everything else he types. We like Nessy Fingers for typing instruction. (We messed around with HWT for years. Never worked.) He copied a paragraph from "The Door in the Wall" book this morning. Missed a couple of little words ("a, the") and two capitals, but not bad overall. It was still hard for him, even typing it out. You can't practice handwriting without writing with your hands...for sure! But the rest isn't that hard. Spelling: Type out spelling words Spell words orally Choose the correctly spelled word from a list Try the "My Spelling Test" app (customized for your personal list) (One more plug here for AVKO Sequential Spelling. My son wrote "Ete befe" last year for "Eat beef" and this year he can spell "beginning" on his own. Grammar: We're still doing FLL with grammar. The writing hasn't been horrific; I tend to make worksheets that he fills out on the computer. (Replace the underlined word with a pronoun, etc.) I'm not sure how diagramming sentences will go, but I'm fairly sure we'll work something out. Dictation: You're onto something there. We took a writing class (KidsWrite Basic: http://www.bravewriter.com/program/online-classes/class-list/kidswrite-basic/ ) from BraveWriter (.com) a few months ago, and it was REALLY effective. I would recommend it, and DS10 says it would be worth taking again, so all in all...pretty good stuff! It will focus way more on him finding out what he has to say, and far less on grammar and mechanics...you can work on that stuff once the ideas are down on paper. He ended up writing a three-page essay. (I can email it to you if you'd like to judge the quality of the outcome.) I kept every scrap of communication that went between me and the instructor...and it follows the basic Writer's Jungle program they sell, so the idea is that you can replicate that on your own again and again. It's more training YOU the parent on how to bring words up out of your kid. :)

Yup, we were using it before they revamped the site and put all those teaching metrics on there. Very, very cool stuff!

Khan Academy (.com)? It's free, and video-based. Life of Fred books?

YES! YES! Rick Lavoie!!! I'm LD, I come from a long line of LDers, my kids are LD...totally know what you're talking about!!! My DD has lost a few friends due to her impulsiveness. (She shot a water gun at some very prissy little girls who have snubbed her ever since. She was just desperate to play (she was all of 5) and they never forgave her.) So anyway...this Rick Lavoie character has been in the LD world for quite a long time. It's his video, "How Hard Can It Be?" that allowed me to figure out what the heck was going on with with me academically. He has some new material on the social lives of LD kids. Definitely try your local library for these: Book: It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend: Helping the Child with Learning Disabilities Find Social Success The Video: It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend (clip, but gives you an idea): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys_t-LpxnQw Rick Lavoie: Social Skills and LD: When the chips are down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRIKkU6IVRQ

Yup, my DS9 has it; 30-point differential at his last testing. What it is you'd like to know? If you can eliminate pencils from this student's life, you will attain some kind of deity status. :) Our pediatric Neuropsych told us that learning touch typing would be far more useful for DS than to keep hammering on the handwriting. Teach him either print or cursive, but not both. Keep writing assignments small, like fill-in-the-blank. Essays should be typed instead. Anything you ask the kid to write is at least four times more difficult than for the average student. So your reasonable request for a 1-page report is instantly a 4-page report to him. And this has a multiplier effect through the classes he takes. So an average night of homework turns into: "Don't forget, you have 80 math problems due on my desk by 8 a.m., and make it look nice, people, I don't want to go blind! You were all assigned a four-page essay for our reading this morning. Remember that we're taking a field trip next week for our Life Sciences, so it's imperative that you complete the 50 questions at the ends of both chapters 5 AND 6. Please write out the question AND your answer. And we'll be finishing up our unit on Napoleon, so make sure you have that 12-page paper complete as well. You've had two days, that's more than enough time." And then the most horrifying aspect is that everyone else in the class can do it and you can't. Is it any wonder that kid may have self-esteem issues? Those 80 math problems? It would be SO much better if he didn't have to copy them from the book! If they were already written out ahead of time, that would be WONDERFUL! And the Language Arts essay? Is he old enough to use some voice-recognition software? Cause that would shave off a TON of time!!! Otherwise, can he use a scribe to help him get his thoughts out? And those 100 questions for Science...wow, he could answer those rapid-fire if they were just oral questions. He KNOWS the material, it's making it come out the end of a pencil that causes so much heartache. And the History paper...he needs someone to help him spew out all the stuff he knows about Napoleon and then arrange it in some form. One of the better ways to do that is to type out all his responses, cut each sentence out of the page, and tack those sentences up on a bulletin board. Then you can have some switch places or find the areas where there are "holes" of information. Then rearrange the essay in the word-processing program, print and cut again, and do a final edit. Add dyslexia to this mix, and now you have numbers switching position, two or three readings worth of material, four to six chapters to read, etc. I keep thinking that the LiveScribe Pen ( http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ ) would be helpful, but when the kid doesn't like making marks on the paper, that almost negates the usefulness of it. ???