Carrie Clark's site is wonderful. She has tons of free material and her podcast and youtube videos are very informative. http://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/11-free-speech-therapy-materials/

Not a dumb idea. I'm interested. BTW, I'm a novelist as well. Love the comment about earning .02 an hour. It feels like that some days.

Are you working on fluency? We are using Reflex Math. My son is in 3rd grade and still getting down his addition and subtraction facts. He likes it and I see some improvement.

I call it afterschool work and it's even in a folder that he has to turn in. It's the independent work that I don't need to supervise. The idea of unschooling would send me for a bottle of wine. I have to have curriculum even if it's something I create myself. I do let my son decide what we're going to do for unit studies and we have a great deal of fun doing those. I have learned a great deal of patience and would not consider our homeschool rigorous as I don't like to use that word when I describe anything I do with my children, but I like a schedule and I try hard to stick to it. I overschedule on my planner and since it's online, I move things around when we don't get to it. I'm a pro at forgiving myself for not getting things done in the day, so that's the relaxed aspect of our homeschool.

Sorry, I didn't see this. I quit using LOE shortly after that post and picked it back up a month ago. There were several reasons for stopping, but the main one was that I couldn't give the program the time it needed and my son's tutor and I had different teaching styles. I am now homeschooling him full-time without help, so we're back at it. Now for the answer to your question. I don't think it's for us. We are through Lesson 8. I struggle with teaching it, for example explaining to my son like why rustic isn't spelled rustick and other examples of exceptions that I have to ask the LOE folks to explain to me. They provide excellent customer service on their fan page which is where I post my questions. I know English is somewhat illogical, but my son really hates it when he spells a word according to the rules and it's an exception. He just doesn't get it and I can't make him get it. He becomes frustrated and we definitely do no need that for reading. He already wants to run screaming from the house when he sees a book. I'm not sure what to do at this point. I am certain he is not going to learn the spelling rules, not at this time, so I don't know how I feel about the continuing. We use the spelling list on the website not the ones in the book, because he knows all the words already by sight. We finish a lesson and he can't spell most of them. He knows all the phonograms, but when I dictate to him he says he can't hear the sounds not when I say them or when he watched the videos on LOE's YT page. I have observed that he struggles with ungluing words. I suspect an APD. Testing is on the list of things to afford, but I'm as sure as an parent can be that he has APD. I'm thinking of investing in Dianne Craft's program. I've watched all her videos and received some email correspondence from her and it feels like a better fit for us. All I want from it is to teach him to decode multi-syllable words. What I've learned over the past month of really working with him is that whatever is going on with him in terms of a LD, that it's not that bad (for lack of a better word). He really gets things with repetition. He has a great memory. But he struggles with figuring things out, i.e. word problems, processing rules, etc. Using memory to educate a child is a way to go. I think I learned that way and I do okay. I think other than being boring, LOE is a good program. I think it would be good for someone who had more patience to teach it. I personally do not like feeling like I don't know what I'm doing and sometimes LOE makes me feel that way. Perhaps if I had more time to prep before lessons it could be better, but I don't. I'm pretty certain I'm moving on from it.

I don't know about speed, but you could look at Reading Assistant.

Sandy nailed it. I read on my iPad, Samsung tablet, Samsung phone and I have Kindle (one of the earlier ones). We just got a Fire and I like the text to read feature. I think it'll be good for my son. I used Kindle Unlimited for a short time last summer. I cancelled it and I don't quite remember why. I'm thinking I didn't see the value.

DS - age 9 - Magformers. OMGee! I learned about them here. He is in love with those things. We only have 60. I have to buy more as soon as the budget permits. He also loves the Kid's Kindle. I love how easy it is to get him to read because he wants to get to the "good stuff". Remote control helicopter - Microcopter. Cheap thing from Walgreens. He's in love with it. Much better than that dang Airhog we overpaid for last year. DS - age 23 - CoolDaddy Presto Fryer. I know fried food is bad, but he loves wings and tenders and french fries. I figured at least he can stop picking them up at fast food restaurants and I can eventually move him to olive or coconut oil. Doggy - either 1 or 18 yrs depends on who you ask - a stuffed bird. He's been chasing birds since summer. Now he has one. Me - Dolce and Gabanna perfume and a Miche handbag with a few interchangeable shells. I'd love a designer bag, but it's so not in the budget. With Miche at least my bag is fun.

I can't speak to the flow from Foundations to Essentials because we did not use Foundations. My young 9 year old is/was a struggling readers. He is in 3rd grade and reading on a 2nd grade level. He learned to read by using sight words and he learned to spell by memorizing lists. He could only decode CVC words and would not even try to decode longer words. I also had no idea how to teach him phonetic spelling. This is why I purchased LOE. The jury is not in for me. I've only been using it a few weeks. We are not doing any of the composition work, just phonograms, spelling and grammar. We work with the program 4 times a week and this week we got through 2 lessons, but that's because the spelling has been easy for my son. He knows most of the words by sight. Essentials is not as open and go as I thought it would be. I agree with the above poster that it's not intuitive to teach and that's because I too struggled with knowing the phonogram rules and sounds. I'm still trying to learn the sounds. The videos on the website are awesome and extremely helpful, but I didn't know I needed them until I started using the program. In my opinion they are a must review, particularly prior to a lesson. I'm glad they are there as a resource otherwise I'd be lost. We are on Lesson 4 and I find myself fumbling around and trying to figure certain things out. I just purchased the Uncovering the LOE book on Kindle this morning with hopes of understanding more, but for $95 the TE manual should have included everything I ever wanted to know, not refer me to the book that was not even bundled as an item to purchase. For example: breaking down syllables. I was utterly confused when that popped up in lesson 3. I had read through the "Teaching the Lessons" section of the TE manual prior to beginning, but it all kind of ran together for me, so I couldn't remember how I was supposed to teach my son to break words down into syllables. I had to fumble around to figure that out. It's also thrown me off a few times that spelling words don't quite make sense for the current lesson, but I'm thinking I'll understand it better by and by. We'll see. I'm adding more difficult spelling words to challenge my son. She has spelling videos that make that easy. The phonogram games. Hit or miss. I don't understand the directions for all of them, but there are a lot of them, so I'm hoping this won't continue to be a problem. I need to email customer service to ask for more specific directions on how to play a few of them, but I actually went to EdHelper and created a board game to go with Lesson 3. I shouldn't have felt like I needed to do that. Well, maybe I didn't, but my son needed more practice. This speaks to my next point. I think more repetition for struggling learners that need it should have been built in. I have to add to the program in order to get my son more practice and I could have built my own program for that. This should have been included, particularly since the program markets itself to struggling learners and folks that need remediation. The lessons are meaty. Lots to do and it does not rely on the games. We like games so we play them. I think it would be extremely boring without the games. Now with all that said, I do think with a little work that it's a great program. I'd say 85% of the work has been done for me and for under $300 to learn reading and spelling and help with grammar. I don't think it's overpriced. I work full-time and homeschool, so even though I said I could have put together my own program I don't have the time. I learned from a few posts on these boards that the expectation of the complete program is somewhat unrealistic because our children are all different. I accept that to be a true statement, so 85% is good enough for me. The quality of the materials is good. I would have loved for the TE to be a spiral book or have the option of being used in a three ring binder. I'm going to suggest that to her. My manual isn't that old, but with it's size I could see it breaking in pretty fast and furious. I only have one child to teach. With proper care it's my opinion that all these materials could be used over several years. I have the following components: TE manual, Manuscript Student Workbook, Phonogram & Spelling Rule Quick Reference, Phonogram Cards (72 phonograms I think) Spelling Rule Cards, Phonogram & Speling Game Book Game cards; red and blue

I'm new to LOE, so we've only played three games. I think the games are the best part because my son enjoys them so much. They really break up what could be a super borrring lesson. :closedeyes: I also suspect I'll be able to use those games to sneak in some extra practice drills when I need them.

You just confirmed nearly every single thing God has revealed to me about my child, except the math fluency and overteaching help. Those were a bonus. I so appreciate this post. I think I'll go cry now.

My son made fast friends because of Minecraft. Most of the kids play it in the car/vans on the way to bowling, P.E.and field trips. They all love the game and it helped him to fit in socially.

Hugs. This made my heart hurt, because it was my life for the past 3 years and I cried many nights about it. What's changed for me is we're in a homeschool collective and I basically pay $500 a month for him to have social interaction through group tutoring, extra curricular and field trips. He attends 3 days a week while I work, so it's a mix of childcare and social, honestly, more social because I work from home. Technically, I wouldn't need to send him. There's a mix of HFA and NT kiddos in the group from grades K-5 and the coordinator teaches them inclusion. It's awesome. I know this isn't an option for everyone and I also know it may not last forever, so with that said, I'm working very hard on improving his social skills. I created my own social skills training. I use a mix of social stories (the Julia Boyd and Cheri Meiners books are very good). I'm also using Joesph Porter and Sussan Diamond's Social Rules for Kids http://tinyurl.com/qxkqtto ). Right now both are conversation starters. I use the Builder apps. All of them and we do social skills exercises (Darlene Mannix has a very good book). I also had a membership to The Social Express, but cancelled it because we were doing too much. I'll revisit that one when he's older. This training is not easy stuff to do as it often makes me feel like I'm trying to change the nature of my amazing child, but I don't feel like I have any choice but to try to teach him how to fit in socially because it's so important to him. His brother is 23, so he's kind of an only. In addition to the Builder Apps we're using the Social Skills Builder app and I think it's helpful, but it's new for us, so the jury is still out. I like the videos and they hold my DS's attention. http://www.socialskillbuilder.com/autism-special-needs-software/parents-use-our-learning-tools/ The Social Detective is next on my list of things to buy. I'm of the opinion that you can't have enough of this stuff. Moving from theory to practice is a process and my understanding is it may not work for all children. Fortunately, I think it's working for my DS. I think it would be worth you trying. I'm on the waiting list for social skills group training at the Marcus Autism Center this spring. Pricey, close to $1,000 for 4 or 5 sessions, but I've heard great things about it so we'll give it a go. I'm praying for you and your DS. My heart aches for you, because I have been there.

Emily, You are using LOE-F and AAS with the same child?

My 9 year old forgot. I hope he doesn't remember.