Thank you everyone. A lot of information and sites to look at. With his speech we are finished with speech therapy, we he was towards the tale end he was tested and was above his age in speech and vocabulary. I find with his reading it is mainly certain sounds that provide the glitches, for example what sound ea makes in a word, just little things here and there. He really hates reading pretend stories. I don't know how many of you have used AAR, but for example he read the legend of William Tell in his reader no problem just flew through it. One of the next stories was about 2 bugs that were in a library overnight, and that was totally painful. To me that's some behaviour and reading comprehension . We finished with All About Reading level 4, now we are continuing on with All About Spelling, they have been the only curriculum that has worked out of many. I find with my schedule it was too much for me to be doing anything more then some grammar and All About Reading, along with all the other subjects math, science etc... which probably caused some of the inconsistencies. Now that we are finished with AAR I have the freedom to go back and narrow down the areas which we have problems with. He likes to be right when he reads something. To try and get him to read something on his own to skip a word if he doesn't know it, then to continue finishing reading the sentence to figure out that word is, we are just getting to that point. We just met the homeschool mom/teacher who is going to help/tutor. I have some exercises to work with first so I will try her and see how that goes. She has taught quite a few dyslexic kids in our area how to read. If we are still not there in the next while then I will look into testing again. I really was not impressed with our psychologist, she was suggested by many to me as the best in the province. However when it come to understanding homeschooling she wasn't very helpful. I left there feeling very low and alone. Once again thank you for all your help and suggestions

Funny you say to just dump it, I was thinking the same thing when I was doing chores later this afternoon. We got him evaluated when he was younger. I dug out the report and our psychologist said that "He did not present with a specific learning disability. His reading difficulties are related to a general cognitive profile that is somewhat weak , coupled with a phonological awareness deficit that is likely associated with his developmental apraxia." I personally find he does have some dyslexic tendencies, we still struggle with B and D confusion, and number reversal pops up sometimes I have recently been in contact with a homeschool mom who is a teacher and taught at a private school for kids with learning disabilities. She is helping a lot. He has come a long way but gets discouraged very easily, and his confidence in reading is low. What is TOPS ? Thank you for the information Marjorie

It's been quite a while since I've been on here. So here's some information...My son is 13 years old (14 in Sept) he has apraxia. We have been slowly conquering reading which means he can't do a lot of reading independently. Writing out sentences, means I dictate, spell, and a lot of writing is very tiring for him. We have always done Apologia Science ( Botany, Zoology 1, 2 and a most of 3) loved it. We are part way through General Science, it took the longest time to get into the flow through the history, and scientific method etc... Now that we are on the tale end of Geology/ Fossil record, I find it not bad , I love the text and how it is written, and then we start to dwindle. He can fill in his notebook with me helping, experiments we talk about them and then read what happens, we will do the odd one here and there . I can never plan far enough ahead to have everything available plus doing 3-4 in a week is too time consuming. he doesn't do the study guide, I ask the test questions verbally, and usually does well. Our homeschool conference is next month, and back in Sept I thought I would continue on with Apologia all the way through, however I find I spent a lot of money and am not using the majority of the tools, plus our love for learning Science has dwindled. I know we are behind, we stop school at the end of May/ first of June. So I had thought of finishing what was left in the start of next year, and then make up or pull some stuff from here and there with unit studies or find another curriculum. I found the jump from the elementary Apologia books to this one drastic. We went from a 2-3 day/ week interesting study to a rigorous 5 day/week crazy schedule. I came across Noeo Science and was intrigued, the variety of books (not a textbook) appeal to me and I am sure to him (he's an auditory learner) I was also looking at Christian Kids Explore quickly. I guess I want to put the fun back in Science, and have something that is not so rigorous, I can become an "army general", and too structured very easy. For example : he has a really nice electromagnet kit he got for Christmas, I won't let him open yet as I want to use it, but feel I can't as we have so much in our Apologia left to do. We farm and I have a feeling he will be headed that way, I want to put that spark back into Science for him. I had a boy who loved learning about fossils, making cat traps with baskets and pulleys, he's watched countless operations,and we are hatching chicks right now. I feel like it is to late for this fun stuff, that it's time to get down to the nitty gritty. Anybody have any suggestions ?

Ok, thank you. My son will be 13 in Sept, and although he is getting older he still likes the coloring page, it's just something to do while your listening. I see that you can order the coloring page separate. The outline sounds like it would be a good fit, where he is a bit older. I found a sample online of the first couple of pages of the book so I got to read the introduction etc...and with what you told me its helping to clear things up a bit. Thank you

Hi I'm finishing up SOTW vol 3. I was going to keep going with vol 4 but I've seen a lot of places people have said that it follows a different format, that it's not as conversational etc... so I'm starting to wonder about using it. Then I read somewhere it was revised and then a minute later that in fact it hasn't been.So far we love SOTW my son likes to color while I read and I like the maps I find they are well done etc.. I don't usually do any of the extras due to time. So I'm just a bit confused can someone set me straight. Thanks

My son is 10 yrs old with apraxia. We will be finished the 2nd level of All about Reading and All about Spelling by the first of June. He's doing good some days not great it just all depends. I'm a farmer's wife and farm with my husband so when the sun comes I get busier. We had a busy winter with lambs and school fell behind. I don't want to take the summer off with my son when it comes to Reading/ English, he has come so far. I am debating about using Bob Jones distance learning and starting it the first of June. My thoughts is that with all the other subjects done we/he can focus on Reading and English. Instead of watching video's he can watch his English and if he gets stuck I can help. I have the Reading 4 books and it looks as though it will be a good fit,some might be a bit tough but some stuff he can do. I talked to the homeschool consultant at BJU and she thought grade 4 would be a good as well. We have done some grammar through Rod and Staff so he is not foreign to that. He does well with spelling, I think its because of all our years in speech therapy making sounds, watching how your lips move etc... Am I on the right track, or am I way out in left field. We've used the distance learning before and he enjoyed it. Advice anyone. :confused1:

Thank you did you meet once or twice a week?

I'm looking into doing an Apologia Co-op for the Zoology 1 book (flying creatures). I found a schedule online by Cynthia Lawerence which takes 11 weeks. I would have to do some tweaking as we have a couple of younger students (age 6) the oldest students would be 10. The amount of kids would be around 15 students. Has anyone else done a Co-Op with Aploogia ? Do most people follow the schedule in the book and use the journals or do you use the book and do the activities in the book and find other sources of activites? Any advice, suggestions.... I would do the botany co-op however I did Botany with my son last year and since I'm teaching the class I thought I would change the subject.

Don't know if I will be any help ,(I haven't used MM), I have used MUS from the start with my son (he will be 10 in Sept). I enjoy it, he says that he doesn't like it.(however I get that with pretty much everything that involves writting). He watches the video's with me. I found this year we had to do transfer questions on looseleaf instead of doing them in the studentbook. Long division was a problem with the blank area he needed lines. He knows his math I don't have to worry about that, usually by the 2nd or 3rd day(sometimes the 1st depending on the topic) he can do his work all by himself. I was tempted to switch with all the options out there and the extra whining I was getting with the extra writting but I'm sticking with it because of all the help options (dvd, manual, web site...) and the fact that it goes all the way through to gr 12, I don't have to worry about gaps., most importantly he comprehends it and can apply it, I'd get the whining over the writing with any program. Good Luck !!

We are starting the middle ages next year I used both MOH and SOTW vol 1 last year. I enjoyed more of the biblical side to MOH so this fall I was leaning towards MOH vol 2 .Homeschool in the woods has their project passport that I was going to purchase to use with MOH. (The project passport looks like alot of fun). I didn't do any of the activites in MOH , we mostly did the ones with SOTW (I really liked their activities, coloring pages, maps were easier to use...). Then I see that MOH has coloring pages, and a lapbook option.. Decisions decisions, I'm a bit wary that the MOH lapbook will be a bit dry. Just wondering if anyone has tried the project passport or the MOH coloring pages and lapbook. My son will be 10 and he is not a writer but likes listening to the stories and he will color and likes to do crafts so I know the MOH notebooking pages won't work. Any suggestions, help, advice would be greatly welcomed...

Has anyone used Project passport : The Middle Ages, is it something you can do for grade 5 history alone or is it something you could add to Story of the World Vol 2 ?

Hi I'm planning next year, my son will be 10 we slowly started SOW vol 1 in grade 3 we got part way and come across a plan that did MOH and Story of the World together so this is what we have been doing this past year. I really liked Mystery of History because it incorporated the bible more than Story of the World, however I haven't been doing any of their activities and I'm not in love with their maps. We do the activities and maps with SOW. Looking to next year I'm deciding on weither to go to MOH vol 2 or SOW vol 2. I also came across Project passport: The middle Ages which looks really neat, I have also thought about Sonlight the second year of world history. I only homeschool 1 he's behind in his reading (he has apraxia) so I mainly read everything, we had the SOW on CD which I love and so does he. We have a farm so I can't be doing school 5 hours a day, I'm a little concerned with Sonlight in that respect. We will be doing Math u see, water animals of the 5th day (apologia science), some canadian history/geography and All about Reading and Spelling so far that's what I have planned. Just stuck on the history/geography. Just wondering what other people have experienced liked or disliked with. Thank you

We are finishing up AAR level 1, I'm looking for some readers/ books that my son can tackle for the summer. I got some "I can read books" from the library but I found that some of them we're difficult for him. Any suggestions?

Sounds Good :001_smile:

Thanks for the help ladies !

(I just figured out how to reply and still see what you wrote... so to answer a few more things )We did the pre-level first, we did it in a half year but he knew his letters and what sounds they made, it was more a review and to address rhyming (he couldn't do well) and some of the other big 5 ready to read skills. I should dig out his evaluation. He leans toward auditory and visual , but the big thing she told me is that if it's not meaningful he won't remember it, so I have to make it meaningful. I'm glad you had a good experience with your psy, I just was not overly impressed with ours, and when we did it, my inlaws were really pushing for it, and I was just not convinced about doing it. We thought he might be dyslexic so that was the main reason why we went. He's alot better with figuring out b and d since we have done cursive. He still does number reversal some time, if he does a question and writes the number down wrong I get him to say the number he wrote and then he realizes he's done it wrong. I find when he's going through a growth spurt stuff gets more jumbled up for a few days and then it straightens out, we just had one recently. Sorry I rambelled on.

We have started so many reading programs it's not funny. In the first of it we did Explode the Code, did the 1st book some stuck moved on to 1 1/2 bk and we hit walls. We then tried Learning Lanuage through Lanuage Arts I love it how it was laid out and it encompassed everything, however we only got part way and then it just moved way to fast he couldn't grasp blending. So then we tried Alpha Phonics, plaid phonics (modern curriculum press), 100 easy lessons and we even did explode the code book 1 again as he didn't remember anything from it. He knew his letters the sounds they made when it come to blending or you got past the grade k book then we would just hit a brick wall. We got him evaluated about a year ago by a psycologist. She said he didn't have a learning disability but he would never learn how to read well, or write well but to teach him how to do lists, write his signature, and look into getting him a computer program that he can just speak and it does the writting for him. When I asked her to do reccomendations for reading programs she gave me a lot of papers with recommended methods (all school/ classroom based)(Orton- Gillingham was the top coice). I had given her all I could on AAR(based on Orton-Gillingham) the web sites, printed material etc... she never really looked at it or recommended it, I gave her lots of homeschool catalogues... $ 1200 + later I don't know where her report is. I went to a lady who has a homeschool store 30 min from my house with the report, and we sat and talked, she has homeschooled 8 kids she told me that I couldn't believe the amount of moms that walk through her doors with the same reports and told their kids would never read and the kids end up reading not all of them being avid readers mind you, but she said its not impossible. So I bought the AAR, and it has worked so far. My MIL has homeschooled my son for me some (we got really busy on the farm) and she was concerned b/c she didn't think he was getting it, but things slowed down and he got over his hump and now hasn't had any problems since. The problem occured with the TH words (them, then , than) he hasn't got his TH sound yet its still a "F" sound, we are still working on getting his tongue to stay down on his "s" sound. I don't know why AAR has clicked but it has. When he was having difficulties and we first started with the word lists it would some time take us a couple of days to do a lesson. Now things are a bit easier. I think age has helped a bit, he's developed a bit more. Our speech therapist also had to put her hands on his mouth to position it so he could make the right sounds. A mirror has also helped alot to. I hope that has helped you I probally got off topic and if I haven't answered your questions feel free to e-mail or post again, and I can tell you a bit more. ;)

I'm looking to do grammar with my son, I borrowed First Lanuage Lessons from a friend of mine, I was going to use for the summer and then I was thinking of switching to Rod and Staff Beginning Wisely 3 for the fall. My son has developmental apraxia and when we try and memorize to much he goes behind. We do an AWANA program in the fall at our church so memorizing sections takes a lot of brain power. So I thought the Rod and Staff might be a good switch from trying to memorize poems in the First Lanuage Lessons. We are also going to be doing the All about Spelling during the summer (we're almost done AAR level 1). Am I way off base ? Any suggestions !:lurk5:

Hi, this is my first time posting. My son who will be 9 in Sept was diagonised with developmental apraxia when he was young. His speech is great, we had problems with reading (psycologist said he would never learn to read well..) We are finally having great success with All about Reading we are almost finished level 1 and we are going to start All about spelling once we are finished reading (as the next level of reading doesn't come out untill end of Sept). I want to keep going with the spelling during the summer so we don't loose momentum. I'm just wondering about grammar. I am able to borrow "First Lanuage Lessons" from a friend, and I have done the first two lessons with him, however our homeschool confrence is this weekend and Rod and Staff will be there and I was debating about going with the Beginning wisely 3 . I was going to do some of the First Lanuage Lessons over the summer but I am hesitant about the fall. My son goes to AWANA (T&T) we had a hard time this year with memorizing some of the verses, we we're really busy on the farm so I couldn't work with him as much as I wanted to, and I find if I try and get him to memorize or if he gets to many new concepts thrown at him we go behind . Not sure what to do, any suggestions !:confused: