Thank you so much for this! I am looking into all of it. Thank you. I will read up some more and then maybe come back with questions 🙂

You are right. Her official diagnosis is not NVLD. It is officially OCD, Disorder of Mathematics, Delay of Motor Function, and "other" (visual-spatial and fluid-reasoning deficits). But in the final report and in our follow-up meeting, the evaluator used terms like non-verbal difficulties many times. Thanks for your suggestions!

Thanks. She is on meds. 2 evals say no to Autism, though I still wonder... We are back to doing Rod and Staff slowly and together for now. It is going ok. We will re-evaluate in a month. 🙂 The mental health stuff is our biggest obstacle and our biggest focus right now.

Thanks so much everyone! We decided to go back to Rod and Staff--slowly and doing problems together on the white board. It is going ok. Not great, but not terrible. We'll try this for a while and see what happens.

I've never heard of that one, but I'll check it out. Thanks!

She actually was doing ok with R&S last year. We got half-way through the 4th level. I switched her to MUS because I thought hands-on materials might help her to more easily grasp the concepts, but maybe simple and straightforward would be better for her at the moment. Hmmm. Thanks for the suggestion!

Thank you so much for the recommendations! I like the idea of a focus on fractions and word problems. I know Ronit Bird has a fraction resource that might work for her as well.

Thanks so much for the input! I think she mostly understands the concepts of place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Word problems are extremely difficult for her. She has very little understanding of fractions and none of decimals beyond money. She is pretty good at working with money but struggles with measurement. I am feeling overwhelmed because there is so much she struggles with in math. Good to know about the calculators though!

My 14 year old has a variety of mental health and learning struggles. She has a collection of disabilities under the non-verbal learning disorder label. She has dyscalculia. She has severe OCD. Many of her compulsions revolve around numbers. She is in intensive therapy for her OCD and making progress slowly but steadily and we are thrilled. This is going to be a long road for her. I have already decided that she will do another year of middle school next year, since we have been able to do very little school with her so far this year. She is a talented writer and strong in all areas of language arts. I am trying to figure out what to do with her for math. She knows her facts for all 4 basic operations. She has been at this level for over a year. I think she is ready for us to begin formal math instruction again with her, but I am unsure where to start. I have MUS Gamma and Delta, and it looks like she would place half-way through in both levels. I don't love MUS for her, and I can't put my finger on why, but so far this seems to be the best option. Does anyone have any other suggestions? i feel like she needs a combination of hands on (though she gets bogged down by the MUS rods) , lots and lots of supervised practice, and maybe informal games. Thanks for any input anyone may have!!! I will cross post this on the learning challenges board as well.

My 14 year old has a variety of mental health and learning struggles. She has a collection of disabilities under the non-verbal learning disorder label. She has dyscalculia. She has severe OCD. Many of her compulsions revolve around numbers. She is in intensive therapy for her OCD and making progress slowly but steadily and we are thrilled. This is going to be a long road for her. I have already decided that she will do another year of middle school next year, since we have been able to do very little school with her so far this year. She is a talented writer and strong in all areas of language arts. I am trying to figure out what to do with her for math. She knows her facts for all 4 basic operations. She has been at this level for over a year. I think she is ready for us to begin formal math instruction again with her, but I am unsure where to start. I have MUS Gamma and Delta, and it looks like she would place half-way through in both levels. I don't love MUS for her, and I can't put my finger on why, but so far this seems to be the best option. Does anyone have any other suggestions? i feel like she needs a combination of hands on (though she gets bogged down by the MUS rods) , lots and lots of supervised practice, and maybe informal games. Thanks for any input anyone may have!!! I will cross post this on the learning challenges board as well.

My son loves this idea of "policy research". Any other suggestion for quality sources along the same lines as The Economist, foreignpolicy.com, and the Supreme Court blog? I'd like to make a big list and then narrow it down. Still thinking how we might like to organize his studies.

So many great ideas here! Thank you all so much! This past year, his civics class was just a broad overview of the US government (3 branches, etc.). I'm going to sit down with ds and use these ideas and see if we can make a plan. Thanks again! 🙂

My son loves everything political. He watches C-SPAN every moment that he can. He is truly interested in the entire process, and enjoys reading articles about issues from different points of view. This year, he did a civics class using Notgrass. Next year, he is requesting as much history (I have that covered) and politics/government as I can give him. I'm trying to come up with a class that is different than civics. I have several resources that I think he would enjoy (a Founding Fathers Great Courses class, a workbook that he wants to work through about applying the Bill of Rights to Supreme Ct cases, a few other things). I'm thinking of having him keep a "political notebook" where he can keep track of current events, bills debated, etc. What he does NOT want is for me to make this too "schoolish"--so he would not like tons of big papers, etc.., which I am fine with since that is covered in his writing program. Anyone have any ideas to help me flesh this out or ideas for what I can call this course? Thanks!

Thanks for the responses everyone! I am still reading them and thinking about what to do (if anything). It's nice to know it's not that odd of a problem to have a high school kid who is a poor speller!

Ds15 has done years of spelling workbooks. Last year, we used Spelling Wisdom to see if another method might help. He always gets great scores on his spelling tests, and he reads for hours at night before bed, but it just doesn't transfer! I'm trying to figure out if I should be trying to do something about this, and if so, what? Is there a spelling bootcamp-type program for high school? I see IEW has a spelling program for this level, so maybe we should try this?? The other day, ds spelled certain like "curtin". His 9 year old sister told him how to spell it correctly. I feel like I don't want him to go out into the world in a few years unless he can spell at least a little better. 🙂 Advice?

So, we decided to switch dd back and do Math Mammoth 4. Dh will do it with her 2 times per week and I will do it twice. On the fifth day, she will do a MM review sheet. Thanks everyone for the help!

Ha! For some reason teaching MM and helping her with problems she doesn't understand or gets incorrect completely drains my (limited) energy like no other math program ever has! I enjoy teaching R&S and CLE! I think it's because it is hard for me to wrap my brain around Math Mammoth. 🙂

So, today I put the first few pages from MM4 in front of dd9 and she was back to her old self, enjoying math, chatting about the problems as she solved them mentally, etc. This is a real problem for me because i don't want to teach MM 🙂 I am trying to think out of the box a little (and I haven't given up on the Horizon idea) because she was like a different kid with her old friend MM today! I am going to talk to (math loving but busy) dh and see if maybe he can take over at least a day or 2. I feel like I could pull off teaching MM a few times a week, but not often enough to get through the curriculum. (We have various therapy appointments, health crashes involving my health and that of other family members, and that is why Saxon with the DIVE was supposed to help me so much!) Still puzzling it out... Thanks for all the suggestions and support everyone!

Thanks everyone! I will also take a look at Beast Academy and Mathematical Reasoning. I love R&S for 1 of mine, but I think it would not be a good fit for this kid. I appreciate all of the suggestions!

When I ask her, she says she "hates it all." 🙂 I will look at Horizons 4 right now. Thanks!

Yeah, I pulled my CLE 4 out and I think we will have the same problem..

Thanks! I saw that MM had a few on youtube, but I didn't know there were so many! This might solve the problem, though I wish there was a video for every lesson.:) Thanks so much!

I used CLE with my now-14 year old, but I'm wondering if I might run into the same problem since it seems similar to Saxon.. I guess it is a workbook, though, so she might like that better. Teaching Textbooks I'm not sure about. Thanks for the input!

DD9 has always been pretty strong in math. She did Math Mammoth grades 1-3. I decided to switch for 4th because I needed something easier for me to teach (I have 3 other kids, 1 with special needs, and I have a chronic illness, so easy is a must for me this year). I bought the DIVE DVDs and put her in 5/4, which looked perfect for her, if a little easy, at least at first. She absolutely hates it. She has cried almost every day. I feel like I have tried everything. I have her only doing evens or odds. I am sitting with her for the entire lesson and independent work part of it. I have copied the problems down for her. I tried yummy snacks during math. Nothing has helped. This has been going on for 5 weeks. I think we are going to need to switch, but I really find MM 4 too difficult for me to wrap my brain around and teach every day. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I think she needs a workbook or work text. I really want her to enjoy math again. Help!!

Thanks! I'll check out the Keys to series as well.