I am not a great fan of my kids counting on their fingers - You can try Math-It. It has boards and little cards that you lay over the correct answers. It is follows a very logical sequence through the math facts and I was very disappointed when it didn't really do the job for us. Do not pay much attention to the manual saying that the child can learn all the math facts in one evening - it takes much longer. My daughter learnt to double and half with Math-It. We have moved on to http://www.currclick.com/product/13616/How-to-Teach-Math-Facts?it=1. This has really worked for us. It uses flash cards and at first I wasn't very comfortable with the idea, but we have got it to work by turning it into games. "This is a hard one - I don't think you are going to get it..." - "Oh, my goodness you got it!!". Timing her and keeping her personal best time for a set of cards. Having mommy's pile of cards (the ones she doesn't know) and her pile (known facts) - the aim is for her to get all the cards and then poor mommy has none. I printed the flash cards from www.apples4theteacher.com . Currclick also have triangular ones that we are using for multiplication. Once she was reasonably confident with a set of flash cards I also got her onto Sumdog (www.sumdog.com). It is an online maths gaming site where kids play games against each other and it is for free! You can set what facts she is practising even to the level of number + 1 or number + 2. So I set the level on Sumdog to what we are working on. Once she found that she was actually starting to win some games, she was hooked! Hope that helps. Helen

natnclay - Thanks for the reply - I can see that you have been round this block and we have both considered the same issues. My biggest bug bear is that if the kids sign up with LS, we will have to give up a lot of our HS. The fun and excitement of finding something new and just trying it for today. At the same time, I am rather nervous about bringing my boy home as such. He is a high needs child and going into puberty is an added challenge. Then still to find material that will work with him - DH will hit the roof if we do flounder. We are part of a homeschooling group (2 of the families do have kids signed up with LS). It doesn't really seem to float DH's boat. He works for a bit corporate and there is a great elitist element there as far as the kids education go. I can only imagine the conversations at work - first his son is at a remedial school and then being home-schooled while everybody else have their kids at the posh schools. He also travels a lot so he doesn't have a lot of time to get involved with the kids schooling... I will just have to whittle away at him. As far as keeping one child in school and having one at home - We have done that for 18 months and it is very difficult. My son feels very hard done by - he has to go to school and his sister is at home. We go on an outing and he has to go to school. For me it is very much a case of both at home or both at school. Public schooling in our nick of the woods is problematic. To give you an example - in one province of our country, by the middle of the school year the education department had not managed to deliver text books to the schools - the text book were sitting in a warehouse in Johannesburg, but they could not get their ducks in a row to get them to the schools. There are some functioning public schools, but I would not want to send DD to one of them, let alone DS. Officially we have an inclusive education policy, but in practise it is no more than a constitutional mention. The child will be included in the class but there are no services. There are various private school options. Some of them will not except a child that has been to a remedial school. Some of them offer excellent support. Fees are high (IMHO) - doing a quick conversion it will be about $14,000 p.a. All these private schools also require a substantial deposit of around the rand equivalent of $7,000. This may or may not be refundable. On top of that there is uniforms and books etc. My fear is that we send DS and DD, so costs X2, and after 3 months they hate it and we take them out - it could turn out to be very expensive. I would still have to advocate for DS and that whole scenario of trying to sort out academic and social issues via remote control - personally I would rather opt for a hole in the head! From my side I now feel that we should just give LS a bash. If it works it will be great, if it doesn't we just cut our losses. I just need to convince DH... Everybody has been most helpful and the links have helped to get a feel for what else is out there. Thanks

A Journey through Time in Verse and Rhyme - it is has some Waldorf poems/verses but 90% of it is a great selection of poems.

It is not pleasant to go through that :grouphug:. These professional people often seem to forget that they are dealing with real people, not just a diagnosis and an adult in charge of the diagnosis. After struggling on my own, I just viewed the eval process as a means to getting help and finding out the best way for me to help my child ... tried to keep my eye on the ball through the tears... Good luck

Thanks - I have looked at Oak Meadow. Unfortunately our family was very badly treated by our local Waldorf school. I am able to separate the Waldorf philosophy from our experience, but my DH and especially my DS wants absolutely nothing to do with Waldorf - I can't even read a verse to my son that sounds remotely Waldorf. My daughter doesn't mind - she was too young to understand what was happening. So DD and I have been doing a bit of Waldorf in our HS, but DH would always view it with a raised eyebrow. I actually mentioned Oak Meadow to him yesterday and he just said "forget it". In initial discussions with Laurel Springs they said that they customise the child's curriculum and they do a whole learning styles assessment - anybody been there, done that, got the T-shirt? Is it really as good as it sounds?

Thanks - I had a look at all the websites. I didn't know about NARHS and it is an interesting option - American school is very reasonably priced and will be good to remember for high school.

:grouphug:

Hi. Since this is my first post I feel I must just intoduce myself. I am Helen and we live in Johannesburg South Africa. I have 2 kids - ds 12 and dd 9. DS was diagnosed with numerous learning disabilities and SID 2.5 years ago. He has been at a remedial school for the last 18 months and has made wonderful progress, so much so that the school is recommending that he can be mainstreamed at the end of the year. (Our academic year follows the calendar year). He will then be in Grade 7. I have been homeschooling DD for the last 18 months as well using a rather eclectic approach - a bit of Waldorf (we were at a Waldorf school until everything went pear shaped), some WTM, Singapore maths etc. I want to HS both the kids, but DH wants them to go to school. My thinking is that an online school like Laurel Springs will be a good compromise. Has anybody here had any experience with Laurel Springs for a child with learning challenges? DS's reading is ok, but slightly slow and still needs to sound out some words. Spelling is still a challenge for him, but it is constantly improving. The school says that he will need support for maths ... Any feedback will be appreciated.