Thanks for the mention of High Noon books! They look wonderful!

That is something else I like about my son's school. The principal knows him by name. The secretary knows him by name. Many teachers, and many random kids of all ages know him by name. It is not a small school, with about 500 kids K-6, but it has a good atmosphere.

I really like the peer group for my son. The kids are very sweet. He is still hugging other boys in 1st grade. The first month of Kindergarten, at his school, they have a Gingerbread Man theme. The kids tour the school a little every day, and find crumbs from the Gingerbread Man. On the last day they return to the class and a parent has brought in a Gingerbread Man cake. He has art once a week and P.E. and music twice a week. In K he had Big Buddies with a 6th grader, and in 1st grade he has Book Buddies with a 5th grader. The math program is Math in Focus. There is a counselor who focuses on military issues, and runs a lunch group for military children 2x/month. This has been really good. On Veteran's Day military children got a box of cookies and a stuffed animal, and his class made a card for my husband thanking him for his service. Right now he is in speech 3x/week at school, and his speech teacher helped me to get him into private speech. I like her. They do a lot of cute things I wouldn't do, too, that my son likes. They had a scarecrow day this year. They have school-wide watermelon day where they eat watermelon. Last year they put their watermelon in water to see if it would sink or float. This year they guessed how many seeds it would have and then counted the seeds. Last year they did several cooking or food activities (mostly fairly simple, but they made apple pie in a crock pot for apple day). My son recently got an award at an all-school assembly that they give out for academic improvement (he has problems in reading). He was so proud, and still looks at his ribbon all the time.. I don't think I could do anything to make him as proud as he was to be recognized by his teacher and principal in front of the whole school. It has helped his motivation.

Late but my son's private speech is being paid 100% by Tricare Prime. It has not been too difficult. I have had to repeat phone calls once in a while when someone at the Tricare office thought our provider was not on the approved list (for no apparent reason). Getting referrals for it and going to the referral office were no problem. He is not enrolled in EFMP, either. There is no need for it imo. (edit -- in our situation) My two younger kids started in speech therapy but then got tubes in their ears (it turned out they had fluid that couldn't be seen). The referral to the ENT was not difficult to get for them, either. I am sure it varies by location.

We like brown rice. I use it as a casserole base sometimes (for my chicken divan it is fine) or put jar sauce on it with frozen vegetables.

The Sam books move a lot slower than the Bob books. My son was not having success with the Bob books, so that is why I like the Sam ones! My son took a while to blend at all and is still sounding out -- so that doesn't jump out at me personally. I think segmenting (what is needed for spelling I think) and blending (for reading) can be separate skills for kids. They are related but some kids will do one but not the other for a while. AAS does teach segmenting, as do a lot of other things. In AAS you say the individual sounds in a word as you pull down a letter tile. This was a great method for my son (with me modelling it for him over and over and letting him copy exactly what I had done). I think a lot of kids learn segmenting by: you ask them the first sound in a cvc word. Do first sounds a while. Then ask them last sounds in a word. Do that for a while. Do middle sounds for a while. Then -- bam, they can identify first, middle, and last sounds in a cvc word, and bam, they are segmenting. So, I didn't have much luck with that, but it seems like it works for a lot of people. I agree on the Barton screening.

I agree with Terebethia also. For my son having a manipulative (i.e. letter tiles) was Very Important. It made it concrete for him. Orally doing blends or segments (mmmmaaaaannnn and see if he could say man) was not helpful for him. I spent a long time modeling for him, without asking him to do anything. Then, I asked him to copy me right after I had done one. The word chains (where you start with man and ask him to make it can) were great for him too. I looked at phonemic awareness activities done orally and changed them to be done with a letter tile. Like -- the ones where you say a word, and they are supposed to segment it with coins or counters.... he did much better practicing doing that with letter tiles. It was an extra help for him to understand what was going on.

I recented to the bottom. However -- I have had a home visit. I felt the people were respectful to me. All the services here for children under age 3 (that I know about at least) happen in the home, so it is going to be in the home anyway. I think it is good -- kids do better in their own home imo. Where I live (Kansas) the people who work public and private are often the exact same people. They contract some hours for infant-toddler services, and then have private clients whose kids didn't meet the cut-off data. If you are feeling shame -- I have felt shame just for my son's difficulties. He has speech articulation that last tested as below the 10th percentile, and he is 6. A lot of people will think this means I don't read to him. It is not true! I am a good mom! I am involved! But there is the thought -- I am somehow responsible. That is why I would feel ashamed. When they came to my house, they stayed in the living room, or wherever I invited them to stay. They were not wondering around the house. But, if the kids wanted to play in their room, it was up to me that we all move in there. For my thing -- the "home visit" was just informational for me. My son had already been evaluated at an office. If someone is rude to you -- feel free to call and complain. Here I would get questionairres mailed to me every few months asking me if things were going well and seeing if I had any problems.

My son did this too. It took quite a while for him to get it. It takes practice. I would model it correctly myself a lot. There is an error correction guide (and youtube vide0) for this I found helpful from abecedarian. You say "I heard "sot" I see a "p" there" or something like that. They have a free segmenting and blending guide, also. It told *just* what to say and it fits my son well. But honestly just working with the tiles from AAS was really helpful for him! He ended up being able to do vce patterns (where silent e makes the vowel long) more easily that consonant blends. I also thought it helped to have him spell words with blends first, before asking him to read them. Segmenting was a little easier for him to work with than blending at first. But, it did take time. edit: this was an area where he was stuck a while, but when he started getting it, he made a big improvement all at once. It opened up being able to sound out a lot of words all at once! Also, I did cover up the word and then uncover it when I modeled and then had him copy. First uncover s, then sp, then spo, then spot. Model how you will blend it. For some tricky words I tried modelng backwards... not directly, but I would have him sound out "pot" and then add an s to the front. We worked with a lot of words like that. I always used tiles for that... I have seen things that say to do it orally, but it is a lot easier on them with tiles. I think in AAS it said ending blends are easier to start with than beginning blends, and it was true for us.

I went back to phonemic awareness with my son. He had to start really basic, but he needed letter tiles to act as manipulatives. Flash cards are fine for him to review but he doesn't learn with them. He does well with multisensory. My son is also in speech. Personally I would read Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz, and see how she does with phonemic awareness. A book I had for this was Reading Reflex. It has a lot of games for phonemic awareness and lets you see where they are. (Most kids do fine on this with no teaching.) He did not learn from that book, it was more games he couldn't do and more questions he couldn't answer correctly. But, it was still a good book for me. We worked on that, and also blending and segmenting. I used a lot of things. If all that is fine, I don't know, but if those are issues, they are worth working on. If it is such a bad experience, I would change something though. My son did really well with things that didn't seem like the same things he had already tried and didn't think he could do. But, he obviously wanted to read, and was having diffculty, and covering up by saying he didn't care. At this point we are not doing Barton but it is on the table, and I would have a rewards chart. I was giving him rewards over the summer but he is enough better that it is not such a problem to get him to cooperate. But he does a reward chart in speech that he does really well with -- he gets tokens as he makes attempts sometimes, other times he get tokens if he gets the correct answer. But if he is trying he can get rewarded for effort, and I think that is really good for him. Usually he does a set amount of tokens and then gets to pick a little game they do with the timer. I have been surprised how well he does with it.

My son is 6 and still in speech for articulation. He has had one-on-one private speech since June and I have been really working with him on phonics since then, too. Th was no problem with him as far as reading. He substitutes with f or v the same as he does in speaking, and it is no problem. He struggled with phonemic awareness, though. He had a very hard time hearing rhymes and learning to segment and blend. A very hard time. Rhymes are still hit or miss. Blends were hard for him to learn. He has/had a hard time with consonants he works on in speech, especially at ends of words. Some things like s/sh have been hard for him in reading, too. Where he is really confused about the sound, it is hard for him in reading. When he is just substituting one sound for another, but not making the sound correctly, it does not hurt his reading at all. A way to find this out if you are not sure (for an older child): have some pictures, that start with the two sounds you are concerned about, and see if he can sort them into categories based on the beginning sound. If not -- it is a problem. (I mean, it is something to work on, b/c it will be hard to read and spell with the sounds that are confused.) Reading Reflex is good for phonemic awareness... I really used AAS but I got a lot of good information from Reading Reflex about little games to play with letter tiles.

My child is too young for it, but I see quickreads mentioned a lot for fluency. You buy the packs on ebay. The model is the child reads the passage 4 times and gets better every time, and they use high-frequency words. I have seen it mentioned for helping struggling readers more than readers who are doing fine, though.

I like Planet Money from NPR. I am also subscribed to This American Life and Science Friday from them, but don't always listen to them.

AAS is good for my son but he sounds really different in how he learns. He doesn't notice or internalize patterns for a long, long time. The rules help him to notice patterns, and he will think of a rule and then use that to find a pattern in a word. Anyway based on what is good about AAS for my son it doesn't sound like it would work great for your son, maybe.

My son is 6 and has articulation errors. He is *not* easily stimulable with a lot of his errors. He never produced k or t on his own, in any position in the word.... it is supposed to be something easy but it took him a lot of hard work. He worked on that with EI -- he was in a group with 2 other kids. I always observed. The therapist used the kids to motivate each other and did get them to say a lot of words in their time. Anyway he fell below the 10th percentile and could be accepted to private speech at the university clinic. It is $75/hour but my husband's insurance pays it all while he is below the 10th percentile. The school speech therapist helped me to arrange it for him, after he did not make hoped-for progress in K. He did do better with one-on-one. At this clinic I can watch him from an observation room -- they record the sessions and I watch on a tv with headphones. They asked me not to work with him at home as he was not stimulable enough, so I was re-inforcing errors. I have never heard of another parent being told that. I still model correct pronunciation by repeating what he has said in some low-key way but that is all now. Private has been wonderful for my son, but in our district I think he is unusual in not making progress with the school speech. The therapist always has 2+ university students doing student teaching with her, so even though it is a group the kids get individual attention, and I think the therapy is well-organized for the small groups. edit: The university clinic in my town only takes the lowest-scoring kids, and tries to exit kids as fast as possible. That is just how it is. It ended up being no problem for him -- but the school therapist told me to over-mention any social problems, self-esteem problem, communication problems, or academic problems I thought he was having. I could truly mention some on the application -- but truly I don't like to focus on the negative. It is something to think about if you are going to a clinic instead of just a private provider.

I was just in the parents reference section of my library, and there were a few books that listed childrens books by theme. I just flipped through a couple for ideas, but I don't know which one is particularly good.

My son did well with word building/spelling, too. When he had letter tiles to slide around or watch me slide around, it made it more concrete for him. I spent a long time trying to do oral games with him in the car about blending and he could do it a little but it turned out not to be the best way for him to learn. I did a "robot voice" though saying sounds and then he would blend.... once he was started with blending he did enjoy this for practice in the car.

We have used the notch card a little and it is part of I See Sam. It is supposed to help children to blend. It is also supposed to prevent them from wild guessing from looking at the first letter or the first and last letter. I am SURE it also helps tracking -- but it does help with the language side, too.

Btw further down on the page right now is a link about Reading Horizons, and then there is info on how to go to the fcrr page. It reviews a lot of curriculums. It is what is recommended in my Sally Shaywitz book -- to research curriculums that have had studies done to prove they are effective. I See Sam is not reviewed and I don't think it is as complete as those curriculums. But at this point it is working well for us! And, for why I didn't pick another curriculum, it came down to thinking he would cooperate. And, I See Sam was cheaper and seemed to be a smaller commitment in that way, at the time, but if it had not worked, I would have kept looking. Plus, my son is in school, so I work a lot on his weaknesses, but I only work on decoding (and phonemic awareness but that is going well at present). The other reading things he can do at school. I do talk about read-alouds with him but he is fine at talking about read-alouds, so I don't look at programs to include those things. I think you can go to google and type in "florida center for reading research" and then type in the name of a program and curriculum, and it will tell if they think it is a good program, and specifically what the strengths are. If you know your daughter's weaknesses, you want one that is strong in her weak areas. So, I didn't actually do that, but it is really a good thing to do I think!

I agree about letter sounds. I read that in Reading Reflex. It is a good book. My son was learning letter names in school, though, so.... http://www.3rsplus.com/reading_free_resources.htm From this page is a "getting started with Read BRI 1" link. But, you just help them blend as you go along, and tell the the new sounds as you come to them, or when they can't remember a sound. I am in the yahoo group and they talk more about it there. But, that is the main part. They recommend starting out revealing one sound at a time (for see you would uncover s and then ee) with a notched card. I cover part of a word sometime still but I never really did the notched card, b/c he could blend. He could do cvc words (like man, bat, fun) when we started I See Sam. He did that with AAS. He had finished K unable to read a word like if, an, at, up b/c he didn't know how to blend. They say on the yahoo group you can teach blending from the books, but I think that would have been frustrating for my son. But -- it is not until BRI 3 that there are blends, I think. So that is a lot of reading to build up skills before they throw in blends! That is a good feature for my son. They do start th, sh, ch in BRI 2, I think, but those are easier for my son than blends. The things that I liked about it were/are: it is easy enough he does not have to struggle too hard, and it is just reading. I was having behavioral problems at first (that went away once he started having some success!) and I didn't want to spend time on things that were not going to have a quick result. Or, seem like a quick result to him. We have had ou and ay in I See Sam so far (off the top of my head) and I have talked about them a lot with my son and looked at the AAS letter tiles for them, and built words, and dictated like in AAS. It takes him a long, long time to memorize these things. For him coming to a word in I See Sam and reading it and thinking for the sound seems to be a good way for him to learn. It is better for him than showing him a flashcard that says "ay" or "ou" and having him say the sound. They tend to go for 3-4 books with only one new "ay" or "ou" that will be hard for my son to remember. And, we read the same book for a while. I have tried some other ways to help him learn these sounds and for him I See Sam is good. He will go along with it. Writing is good, too, but he will only write so much, so a program that has a lot more writing while saying the sounds is not one I would want too much, even though we do that also. If he cooperated more I would do much more with writing and flashcards! But, he is most cooperative with the books. And, he does cooperate, it is just hard for him and he is working hard. I think Abecedarian Level A would have been good for him, too, but I didn't know about it. I do think I will do Level B over the summer. It is, from my understanding, like a workbook version of the Reading Reflex program. Something about my son that makes both of those seem like a good fit: he doesn't have an awesome attitude about reading. It is hard for him -- there is not much sugarcoating that. He doesn't want cute things or coloring or games. He is happy to play any educational math games, but not reading. He will work hard but he wants to see some result, and he only has so much effort to put out, so it needs to be all going toward straight learning sounds and blending, so that he can see a result. He does like the cartoon characters in I See Sam fine, but they are not a draw for him, really. I have looked at other programs that I think look very good, but that I don't think he would be motivated by b/c the extras would not motivate him, and he would see less result in the time he was working. He is good at math and math facts and math problems, and playing little card games..... his frustration level is very high then. But it is so low with reading that is what I look at. Two times in 6 months he has gotten too frustrated and crumpled up a book... in retrospect I was not being aware of his frustration level. But two times in 6 months is really good compared to what it would be with a lot of programs, I am sure. But I think there are a lot of good programs out there. But when we started there was a high chance of him crying, saying he couldn't do it, running away, etc. So -- that is also what I was dealing with. I blame his K for that to some extent -- so at least you don't have to deal with that with homeschooling I would think. edit: In K we were hearing from the teacher that he would stare into space instead of do his work, and she thought it might be focus, but then she would say -- but he really doesn't seem like he has a problem with focus. But he actually couldn't do the activities a lot of the time. This year in 1st grade he is doing all his work as he should at school and mostly very good with me, but I know now that most of the time bad behavior = it is too hard and needs to go slower in some way. But he is more compliant for his teachers at school than he is with me. So -- I think he might do more working with a tutor who had another program. But anyway -- that is why I like I See Sam.

Hi! My son is 6 and in 1st grade at public school. He has an articulation delay. He only said K and T at all starting when he was 4 and struggled with those sounds.... he has made a lot of progress. He was below the 10th percentile still as of June, and he is continuing in a private speech program that is mainly only for kids below the 10th percentile, so I guess that even though he has made wonderful progress and is very intelligible, he is still testing below the 10th percentile (they run on a semester system, and were speaking of exiting him, so he would just do school speech, but after testing they want him to continue). But anyway -- he is doing okay right now. I am very pleased and proud to be honest. He has just moved up to Level F in school and he is in ARI 1 in the I See Sam books! This is exciting stuff! But he is still struggling somewhat. My son was identified with the Dibels screening as having difficulty with phonemic awareness. My understanding is that phonemic awareness can be the underlying reason that kids have a hard time with letter sounds. My son did have a hard time with letter sounds, too. An aide helped him at school, to get them faster and more automatic. But it can be a sign of phonemic awareness difficulty. For my son, at least, it is what I think. (edit -- he was identified all through Kindergarten and his teacher tried but she couldn't get anywhere with him. An aide did really help him with his letter sounds -- thank you. But I worked with him a huge amount over the summer and he passed the first Dibels for 1st grade. I had worked with him in K also but trying things that ultimately didn't help him.) For what I have used -- AAS, and I See Sam from 3rsplus.com. I am planning to use Abecedearian Level B this summer b/c I think it looks good for my son and I have looked at their youtube videos and FAQs a lot. Unfortunately my son does not do well with computer learning for reading....... I tried and he has gotten a habit of random clicking that I wish he didn't have, but it makes computer programs not an option. (edit -- he does well with manipulatives of letters, like the letter tiles for AAS, and that will not be in a computer program. But separately he just guesses and so he cannot do them anyway.) Sometimes he will make a mistake with the letters that he has worked on in speech. I just make the correct sound for him. It usually happens at the beginning of a word. (edit -- he gets flustered and cannot think of the sound the letter makes, and just starts saying sounds that are similar for him... t will be ffff is one he does a lot. He knows it is wrong but he can't think of t. It seems that for me to just to make the sound before he is flustered is the best thing. It doesn't happen all the time, either, I take it as a sign he is working hard.) The book Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz is one that is helpful to me. I do think my son has a hard time with phonemic awareness, and she has a model of that as a cause for having a harder time with reading. For my son I am confident that the approaches that will help someone with dyslexia will help him. But, I am not sure that he has dyslexia. It is hard to know what is his articulation and what is not. But at this point -- the reading programs that say "struggling reader" or "dyslexia" are the ones that work for him. We have the HOP books and Bob books. They move too quickly for my son. The I See Sam books move more slowly but they are hard in their way. They like to mix up words like sell and shell, and spots and stops. Those are challenging for my son but he can do it. I think kids are different, though. My son has no problem with short vowel sounds. He has problems with certain consonants and blends, the same ones he works on in speech, and he took a long time to start to segment blends in general (he could segment fog but not frog for a while, but segmenting fog was also an accomplishment). I have read somewhere that blending and segmenting are the phonemic awareness skills you really need for reading, and the other ones (the manipulating of letters within words) can develop at the same time as reading. I have gone by this at least. I did try a few things that didn't work and was getting very down, but he is making progress now, and I have found things that are working for him. I tried things I know have worked for other people, that didn't work for him. My best wishes for your daughter! edit: My son's recall of words is fine, but he is going to start OT for handwriting at school next semester. So -- they are different in that way. I also don't think my son has apraxia. I have read about it a little and it doesn't seem like him. The SLPs haven't mentioned it, but in my location I think apraxia is a very rare diagnosis, too. Also, I believe the things my son does in speech are similar/equivalent to LIPS. My husband's insurance has paid for him to have 1-hour private speech 2x/week with a student at the local university speech clinic since June.

My son's school has a teacher who is the "Math Enrichment Specialist." She goes to every classroom for one hour a week (they have art once, and music and pe 3 times, during that time). I am sure she works with the more advanced children or prepares lessons for them in some way. But, I don't think they move kids forward in math, either. I think they just do harder work but without moving onto the next topic. I think that is just how it is at his school. They are doing Math in Focus though and it is popular.

I was an early reader, but my reading interests were age appropriate. I read the same books when I was 4, 5, 6, and 7 that would have been read to me (and were read to me) if I wasn't able to read them myself. At my son's school the early readers seem to be accomodated pretty well. He is in 1st grade and half his class started at Level L on the first day of school. That is a goal for my son to reach by the middle of second grade. But -- he is at the same place as these kids developmentally. I think it is different when kids are at a different place conceptually and with their interests. That is when I think there is a reason to move kids up. But early reading by itself, if the kids are otherwise interested in the things typical for their age, I don't think is a reason to move up. In K my son did a lot of learning about seasons, apples, butterflies, and things like that. It would be appropriate for some kids who could already read but for other kids it would not be appropriate. The K teacher also had a huge range of reading materials in her room. I think a good reader who was still interested in typical 5-year-old things would have done very well in her room. They did very little reading instruction as a class. The ranges were huge, and so it was all done as centers. The kids rotated through centers and one center was working with the teacher.

I also am a big fan. My son has taken 6 months to get through the first 3 sets of books. A book every week or so and then review has been his speed. He is successful and he is reading! He is more of a struggling reader but he doesn't seem like a struggling reader with these books. They don't go too fast for him. I am also a member of the yahoo group Beginning-Reading-Instruction. I don't do any guides. My son just reads the books. I tell him a sound if he doesn't know it, and will cover up a word and uncover sounds one at a time if he is having trouble blending. He can get flustered sometimes and just start saying sounds in random order.

My son is in speech therapy for articulation. He is in that same category -- the category where maybe he was a neglected child with a poor home environment, when you read about it. I felt very bad about that for a while. Yet, I did read to him and talk to him and take him on outings, etc. When he was 4 he was in group speech with a little boy who had been adopted from foster care the year before. He had been neglected... his parents thought he was strapped in a car seat for long periods of time, and that no one spoke to him or played with him ever. Well, this little boy was doing great with his parents. He was almost out of OT when we knew him, and making great progress in speech. He made much faster progress in speech than my own son. Much, much faster. That made me feel like it was just something my son has to deal with, not something caused by me. I still guilty moments but they are more about feeling sad for him now. But -- he is not sad for himself.