Just to be clear, I love this book, it is my current loved book, but it is only about 5 pages. But, I think it is a good overview. I don't think it can take the place of Lips or a speech therapist. But, I think it is great for explaining the hows and whys of why you would want to do Lips to help with reading, better than anything else I have seen I think. And it is free at the library! But I would probably not buy this book, iykwim. It would probably work for a child who was just confusing two letters sometimes, but my son at least was far, far below the level where he could be helped just by Phonics A to Z. But still I think it is a great book! In my edition the pertinent pages are: the section on articulation, pages 38-42, and then pages 64-65 also. I am looking at page 41 right now, and my son had problem with all the stopped sounds and and the fricatives except f and v. Then he had problems also with the tongue between teeth, tongue behind teeth, and roof of mouth sounds. It is just a helpful way of thinking about it and understanding "why" he would confuse certain sounds, that to me, seemed very random, as to me, they sound nothing alike.

Well, for insurance reasons I cancelled my appointment with the vision therapy doctor, and went to an optometrist on post. She said my son has convergence insufficiency, and put in a referral for him to see the vision therapy doctor. She said for now he should try to hold his head back from his book when he is reading. She also said we could get him some low-powered reading glasses to help him have less eye strain. I am waiting on that to see what the vision therapy doctor says. I truly don't see any problem when he is reading, but I think I can see it with his handwriting. He turns his head sideways and seems to get tired so fast. I am doubtful it is just his eyes but I am sure this will help. It is nice that she recommended the same doctor I had found on the covd website, though! When he reads he likes to be pretty far from the book, and I have thought it would be easier for him to get closer, and said he should get closer, but I have thought it was a squirmy boy thing and that he likes to have some control of what is going on while he does reading.... so I do think it will help his reading if he can be more comfortable when he does it. He is still in levelled readers with fairly large print (he just started level H!), so it hasn't been a problem yet in reading.

My son did things like Lips in speech therapy. It was very good for him. He was referred to a private clinic by his school speech teacher after a year of no progress with her. I just happen to have a book called Phonics A to Z by Wiley Blevins out of the library... on page 64 he has a chart with the different speech sounds and how they are pronounced, and he talks about how the sounds produced similarly are the ones to be confused, and a few ideas for helping kids. But then he recommends Lips (he says Auditory Discrimination in Depth, the old name). But all the easily confused sounds and similar sounds were ones my son worked on in speech. But, he was not producing a lot of sounds, and he would spend an hour at a time just learning about the difference between 2 sounds or 3 sounds, with many, many different sets of sounds. He has been going for one-on-one for an hour 2x/week since June (with semester breaks) and he is going to exit this semester. B/c he was in for speech overall -- they did not link the speech sounds with letters at first. They started that when he started sh and s, b/c that is when they thought he was ready for it. He did not specifically do the Lips program but he did the same skills in the same ways imo. I like his school speech therapist but he really didn't make any progress with her, right now he is one of two kids in his school she has referred to the speech clinic.

Congratulations!

Hi! My son is in speech for articulation, and there are speech therapists who specialize in articulation. That is just pronouncing/hearing the sounds, I think. Other speech therapists specialize in pragmatic speech. I don't know as much about it b/c it is not what my son is in, but these kids speak very clearly. There is no problem with articulation. They just go to a speech therapist who does pragmatic speech. There are different expectations for different ages, so he could have been fine for pragmatic speech and expressive language a few years ago, but need it now. My son is at a clinic now and they did a language evaluation when he started. I think that is what I would want. My son was not understood to the point it was effecting him having free play and imaginitive play with other kids. He would be upset when he wasn't understood (I often misunderstood him, too). He had temper tantrums. If there is anything like that -- it is important to bring it up. Where I am now they tend to only take kids who are having secondary problems caused by their speech.

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/green-eggs-and-ham If you look -- this book is rated as beginning 2nd grade in reading level. That takes into account how long it is, I think. All the "good readers" are way ahead of what is considered on grade level. But kids on grade level are on track to read grade-level texts in 3rd-4th grade.

I am a huge fan of the I See Sam books. They are easy to get from 3rsplus.com ime. They have come within 2 weeks when I have ordered them. However -- my son had to do phonemic awareness before he started those books. He was not able to blend and I don't think the notched card would have been enough for him (b/c he was just really not getting it). I bought Barton Level 1 and I didn't totally use it with him but the videos were worth the purchase price.

I am reading this book from the library and I am impressed with it. There are pages and pages of games/ideas for teaching phonemic awareness. Lots of explanation. I feel like it is giving some "whys" for things I have done with other programs. It is compatible with everything from "Overcoming Dyslexia." It is not a curriculum, though. I am just so happy to find a book in the library that is not saying "look at a list of words and point out they start with the same sound." That is just not going to work in this house. edit: At this point -- my older son is doing okay, but phonemic awareness was a major issue for him. I am looking at resources for my little 3-year-old son. Oh -- and pages 38-42 talk about articulation. There are pictures of mouths and hints on how to talk about mouth shape/tongue placement/etc when talking about letter sounds. Then it recommends the commercial program Auditory Discrimination in Depth (the old name for Lips) for more. Now -- it is only 4 pages, but I think it is a great overview.

I love those ideas, too. I like the ones also where you cut out pictures and then pick out rhyming ones, and we had a puzzle where the rhyming items fit together. But we have used items as well. I think those are all really appropriate for age 3!!! It is just -- I got to the point where my son was 6 and couldn't do any of it. So I think it is all good things to do, but when there are people who have kids who can't blend, segment, rhyme, etc., and they are getting to be 6 and up, I think there is a lot to be said for trying the explicit phonemic awareness stuff with letters and letter manipulatives. But I am doing a lot more rhyme activities with my little kids even than I did with my older son. And, I did a lot with him, but more along the lines of having him fill in words in nursery rhymes, or reading him Hop on Pop and telling him the rhyming words and reading him the word families. I could have done more with things besides that. Another good activity, though, is to have picture cards or items, and have them ready to go in two piles, one a pile if it rhymes with one thing, and into the other pile if it rhymes with the other thing. So you can have cat, hat, rat, mixed in with lamb, ham, ram, tram, and let them separate them out. I have seen quite a few activities for sorting activities like that, using picture cards, pictures from a magazine, or anything like that. You can have sorts like that by the first sound in a word, if that is what you are working on. Or, by vowel sound.

I really like Reading Reflex except I would get a better kind of letter tile (or letter manipulative). Those little flimsy pieces of paper did not work here. I went back to Reading Reflex and did really well with it once I had a good manipulative.

Hi! I had this same, or a similar, issue with my son. The only thing to work for him was what Merry Gardens said, but with letter tiles (I tried with the colored tiles). I did do every other suggestion, and I am sure they helped ultimately. I think every suggestion is good and could help a child. But here is the thing... my son is still bad at rhyming. So I think it is a major, major sign of problems with phonemic awareness. But I don't think you have to get to rhyming. I think you can do the segmenting and blending skills and then start reading. I have read some things suggesting that a lot of young kids cannot produce rhymes. The reason is they do not become aware of them just by hearing them, b/c they are not separating the word into its beginning and ending sounds naturally (which, of course, many children do). But for some kids they will show higher ability with rhymes after they have started reading, b/c as they read they might be looking at words that way. (At the same time -- I have also read that there are adults who still do not rhyme well and that is considered a sign for dyslexia.... but it is also considered that a fair number of these adults could do it if they had been taught with multisensory methods as children and then applied the sounding-out learned that way and continued to read that way.... complete with brain scans of children before and 1 year after being taught this way, in the book Overcoming Dyslexia.) But -- blending and segmenting really are needed to begin reading. My son turned out to need dyslexia teaching methods ----- they are good for young kids whether or not they turn out to have dyslexia. The reason is that they are multisensory ----- if hearing sounds doesn't work, okay, show them. If hearing them and having them look at something don't work, okay, make letter tiles into a manipulative so they are moving them around. Then they are hearing, seeing, and moving something at the same time. My son is just something of a blank when it comes to flashcards or just looking at things, and forget hearing, but when you add in moving things ----- it still took several weeks but moving things works for him and is required for him. Now everyone says use manipulatives for math but for reading manipulatives (letter cards, letter tiles, different kinds of letters) are considered only for "remedial" children, but I think that is very ridiculous.... and I have found out since that the Montessori school here uses letter cards as manipulatives and uses them in the same ways I used the letter tiles from a program that is recommended for dyslexia. So I think this is just good teaching! Not the only way -- but I think it has to be one of the things done. I think the more methods used the better, probably! But with my son -- when I tried him rhyming objects, well, he didn't understand what a rhyme was, that didn't help him. It was still asking him something he had no idea what I was talking about, b/c he was not aware of rhyming sounds. Despite massive amounts of nursery rhymes and songs etc. over the years. He was able to get it being shown while moving something while saying something or hearing something. There is a thing on the Barton website that lets you see if your child could start with Barton Level 1. I bought Level 1 but I ended up using AAS level 1 (the beginning where you segment cvc words) and Reading Reflex (but with AAS tiles). He needed a lot of help with the level of Barton 1, and it took weeks. But at present he doesn't need the best and most multisensory (as I think these are) methods for reading. He is okay to see things on a page, b/c he has crossed the bridge to those things making sense to him. But he is still learning more slowly and needing more review than most kids, I think.

My son's school has switched to Math in Focus (considered Singapore Math) and it is considered very good for remedial students! They spend a lot of time on one topic, and go slow, and they use a lot of manipulatives at school. It is mastery based. They lay it out well and don't seem to skip around. I don't know that it is better than something else or the best choice, I am just saying, I would not rule it out by any means.

There is a yahoo group (or more than one) for I See Sam. I have been on the one called Beginning Reading Instruction. As far as I know the rule is that c says sss before e, i, and y, and I think it is the same for g saying j. I tend to just let my son try both sounds. By now he recognizes ce at the end of a word (with ace or ice). We are taking a break at ARI 1 right now though, so I haven't gotten that far.

Wow, thanks for this!

That is awesome!!! I also agree, Gingerbread Mama. My son is still in public school b/c it is best for our family right now, but at private speech they said they would let him come early in the morning and go to school late (about 45 minutes), or start early-ish in the afternoon such that he would miss the last 30 minutes of school, but be able to be done at 4:30. His teacher would not hear of it and was shocked I would ask! Oh, well, he is doing 45 minute sessions instead of an hour and getting done at 5:00, but it is working out acceptably. But really! It pushes me towards homeschooling, but it is still not right for us right now. Oh, and guess where he goes as soon as he gets to school 2 days a week? Yes, school speech. So whatever is going on is not so important he can't miss school speech. (Though to be fair he is missing math fact sheet practice then, and his teacher likes him to do it with the class half the time, sigh.)

Thanks!!!

Tagging along..... I am curious about Road to the Code. I have two younger kids (b/g twins who are young 3s) and my little boy is somewhat speech delayed, though not as much as my older son at his age. I own and have familiarity with Barton 1, Reading Reflex, and AAS 1. (Oh -- and the free blending and segmenting guide on the Abecedarian website.) But -- I didn't start any of these until my son was toward the end of Kindergarden, and not doing well. I tried doing phonemic awareness with him, prior to that, just orally, and he never could catch on. I tried with colored markers and he couldn't catch on to that either. He only caught on with letters used. I have my little kids home at least until they are 5 years 10 months and I wonder if I should start with Road to the Code? I never was able to teach my older son his letters or letter sounds -- he learned them in school from an aide who took him in the hallway. I have some self-doubt in this area now and I am not sure what to do. I will not be repeating anything I did with my older son when he was in pre-school, though, or at least not only doing those things (all the standard things I thought were the things to do at the time). Any advice? I looked at Road to the Code at one time for my older son and I have a good impression of it, so I am thinking of it. (Btw -- they will go to the same school as my son, and overall I like his school etc. etc., but although they did phonemic awareness activities, my son learned *nothing* phonemic awareness at school. *Nothing.* They would not provide any intervention for him even though he failed screenings they gave while he was in K, but they did have an aide teach him his letters and sounds, and I am grateful for that, b/c I certainly had tried to the best of my ability, though that was before I knew abut multisensory learning.)

I agree. Something I think might help with the vowels sounds in the middle of words: have letters (on a card, or magnet letters, or letter tiles, but something easy to work with) and make a spelling chain: you make words like map, then change the vowel to o and it is mop, or cap/cop/cup, or nap/nip, etc. You can do pretend words if you want, or only real words (so you could have map, mep, mip, mop, mup if you did pretend words also). Sometimes he reads the word and sometimes you say the word and he changes the vowel to make the new word.

I agree.

Yeah, I don't think it is bad. I think my son needs kinesthetic learning also, where he is moving something around, and auditory and visual is just not enough for him. He also needed (in speech therapy) whole hours spent on just telling two sounds apart. I am not sorry we tried it, and don't think it was a bad program or anything. It is hard to say why something works for one kid and not for another! I tend to think, too, that most SLPs will know about Lips, and Earobics, and products from SuperDuper, etc, and they probably have good insight into what might be best for a kid. I think if you asked "why this one and not the other" they might be able to give a reason.

I think if she is working on beginning and ending sounds then you would do Lips (vs. the other Lindamood-Bell programs). That sounds like my son... confusing k/t and also having an easier time with beginning sounds than ending sounds. My son is in school so he takes the Dibels assessment.... they start with beginning sounds, and ending sounds are later in the year. It is considered easier to do beginning sounds than ending sounds. Repeating myself -- but my son was in private speech 2 hours a week doing things like Lips (articulation below the 10th percentile) and I did a mix of Barton level 1, AAS 1, Reading Reflex but with AAS 1 tiles, and some free downloads from Abecedarian, and then went to I See Sam and did the first 3 levels of I See Sam. The foamy letters sound great! I was casting around doing random things for a long time, and might have been better off with some foamy letters, lol. I thought the "files" from the yahoo group Heart of Reading was good, also. My son does not need Seeing Stars or Visualizing and Verbalizing in my opinion. He is making slow and steady progress now that he has got the phonemic awareness down. He was making no progress for a while (aka Kindergarden) but he is at grade level now in 1st grade. At my son's school they did their phonemic awareness activities without using letters -- spoken only, or with pictures. Pictures I think are good, too, but what he needed was letters, so he could see and hear things at the same time, and have a manipulative to move around. I didn't do anything to make his letters be tactile (like having foam letters) but I bet that would have helped. His letters are just a letter printed on a piece of paper (from AAS), and they are great for him, but I have wondered in retrospect if he would have done better with different letters. edit: It is possible I might want to try something from Seeing Stars in the future, but I doubt it right now. It is hard to tell though -- right now he is making progress, but if he stopped being progress I would be looking again and would look at Seeing Stars or Barton or Wilson I suspect (probably Barton or Wilson). Right now we are doing Abecedarian Level B at home and will finish it by the end of summer, and it is fine right now. Visualizing and Verbalizing is more of a comprehension program -- my understanding is that it is more for a child who has trouble following along with what is going on in a story. At this point I don't think that is going to be an issue, b/c his listening comprehension is good and he knows what is going on in his little readers.

When I looked at Earbuilder I was looking at a computer program. They may have more than that, that I don't know about at all, b/c at the time I thought a computer program would be good for my son.

http://www.superduperinc.com/products/view.aspx?pid=HBPE255 I bought this. I had understood it to be similar to Earobics. It didn't work for my son, b/c it was over his head. He could count syllables, so he did okay on that part, but after that part he would just get wrong answers, and then he went to random clicking. I would sit with him, and my mom sat with him a little too to see if she could help him better.... but it was still just over his head. (This is what happened with Starfall and Headsprout also. I really thought the computer programs that said they went really slow would work for him, sigh. I know they work for some kids, lol.) I don't think this means these are bad products. I think there are some kids who are just going to have to go one-on-one with an Orton-Gillingham-type program to get phonemic awareness. Or -- that is what I think based on my son, b/c that is what worked for him. I bought it wanting him to be able to hear the first sound in a word, by the way. He could hear syllables and compound words when he started it. (And, you know, hearing rhymes would be nice, and telling apart a consonant from a consonant blend, lol.) My son did things similar to Lips in private speech therapy (referred after not making progress in school speech) and I did phonemic awareness with him at home at the same time. That is when he finally made some progress. edit: it was the rhyming level my son couldn't get. we never used it past that part. I think -- looking at the web site. He did fine with counting syllables, but he could do that already. It didn't seem to let you skip rhymes to go on to the next section -- or if so I couldn't figure out how to do it. But that doesn't mean much, I am not great at things like that. Oh, and he was a young 6 when we used it. Also at the time -- about 18 months ago now, I guess -- I was looking at Earobics or HearBuilder and I picked HearBuilder. I don't know why exactly, I was just getting a little better impression of it, and it was newer, while still getting good reviews, and some people were saying Earobics didn't have as good of graphics. I have never seen Earobics so I can't compare them. I will also say I think my son really struggled in this area. I think he had a harder time than a lot of kids would. He was the only child in his grade referred to private speech. This year he is there, and one little boy from Kindergarden at his school, and this is a school with 4 classes per grade, and a lot of kids in speech therapy.

I have been making chicken with hoisin sauce. It is just like chicken with salsa. Also, we do chicken with apricot jam. I usually serve with rice.

I think you should teach phonics at home. Briefly explain the make-up of the non-phonetic words she gets in K, so she understands that ultimately she is doing more than memorize words. My son had major issues in his K class and I have worked with him at home -- only good things have come of it. Nothing bad in any way, shape, or form. I started back at phonemic awareness with him but that is just him. And, I am still doing a lot at home, b/c the school reading goes too fast for him without enough review. Even without that -- I hvae read so much now about kids who have developed a guessing strategy, that I would want to teach phonics to any child. There are not always going to be pictures or circular sentences for them to guess the non-memorized words from!