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.

He can sound out words, particularly the easier ones - 5 letters and under. Anything longer and I have to make him do it. He doesn't like to decode. He doesn't naturally try to do it. He just stops reading and gets frustrated, but when we do it together he'll do it. That's why I thought learning the phonograms would help him to decode harder words. We may not have enough time under our belts with practicing decoding anyway. He has a tutor who has suggested that he hasn't hit his stride yet. She didn't think LOE was necessary at all, but I didn't feel comfortable accepting that. I didn't mean to say AAS was babyish. I meant level 1 would be babyish for him because he knows the words already, so it would be learning the process for him as opposed to learning new words. I realize that's important too, but I just thought LOE Essentials would be better. He is quick to tell me when he knows something. I hate that I'm second guessing myself.

Thanks. The Fry words is just another version of the Dolch, but it's bigger. It goes to 1000 initially (in groups of 100) and then there are the Fry 4000 which adds another 3000 of the most commonly used words in English. I looked at AAR and AAS, emailed Marie and felt like AAS level 1, which was recommended would be too babyish for him. I also didn't like the idea of making the investment and running through it in a few weeks and then having to buy AAS level 2 right behind it. It was more cost effective to invest in LOE. I also didn't think my son would like using the tiles in AAS. He's pretty tactile, but not when it comes to letter tiles. We have some already and he doesn't like using them much.

I assumed that and then I saw someone on the boards with 2 posts and they were a Bee. LOL. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Hello, We're new to HSing. DS is 9 (as of Sunday). HFA Autism (4 year old PPD-NOS diagnosis), pending some more psycho-educational evaluations in February. Hoping to having a speech/language eval at some point in November. He would be in 3rd grade in school, but we're working on a 2nd to 3rd grade level with our curriculum choices. We're using Abeka Language 4 because he did 3 in private school last year, but I just ordered R&S English 3. Abeka 4 is too advanced for him and honestly I don't like Abeka Language. I was gifted R&S English 2 and having looked at it, it's way to easy for him. I'm thinking 3 will be perfect. He's reading on about a 2.5 grade level. We do lots of reading (mostly read alouds) and reading comprehension work Q&A's during and after the reading. He also does a novel study every week. Right now we're using the Magic Tree House books. He likes them and is able to read them on his own successfully and answer the questions I put together for the study. The core of our HS is the 3 R's although there isn't quite as much writing going on as there should be. He does 3rd grade science, social studies and music through our coop. That's a little background. I started using Logic of English Essentials this week. I'm trying to love it, but I'm not. For some reason it's not feeling that logical to me. We have only done two lessons, but I don't see the connection between the spelling words and the current lesson. For example in lesson 1 we had words with "nk" endings. That had absolutely nothing do with with the lesson. It was so random it bugged me. We enjoy playing the games, but it's early yet, so the games are just for fun as he already knew his phonegrams A-Z. He also knows most of the blends. My DS has a great memory. He already knows 600 or more of the Fry words and we are continuing with that list to 1000 and possibly keep going into the next Fry list. He'll know the 1000 by February or March if I keep up the pace. He's a good speller. Again memory, so I think I could teach him spelling by simply giving him a list of words every 10 days or so like he's had in school for the past 3 years and he'd spell those words. My goal when I purchased LOE was to teach him to understand English, but now that I've started I feel like it was a mistake. I feel like it's a wrong fit for him. I don't think he'll learn and process the spelling rules and all the exceptions. Not at this time. He's very literal, so I thought rules would be a good thing, but he struggles with processing information, applying it, and making inferences. He can't do a simple word problem and has some major comprehension issues. For those reasons I don't think he'll get all those rules. I don't want to overwhelm him. With that said, the other program that I was strongly considered going with was R&S Phonics for 2nd grade. We're reading the R&S Nurture Readers (2nd grade) which he loves and I like too, save for all the references to wickedness. It seems that would be more connected, so I'm feeling like I made a mistake buying LOE. We're still in the Nurture series Unit 1, so if I'm going to switch to the R&S Phonics it seems I should jump on it now. I'm not using the workbooks for Nurture. I have them, but I'm not using them yet. Right now I just want to enjoy the stories, at least though the 1st Unit. If I went with the phonics I'm sure we wouldn't use them at all as it'd be too much. I keep referring back to the samples page of the R&S phonics and asking myself why I didn't think that was good enough. I think I was impressed me with all the Youtube videos on LOE's channel. I also got caught up in the fantasy of my child "loving" to read because he "gets" it. ***sigh*** I'm not saying he won't ever, but I don't know. I'm feeling really confused right now. Should I give LOE more time? Does it make sense for continue teaching the Fry words? I hesitate to stop because they're so easy for him to learn. I'ts something he's easily successful at and we need those successes. Edited to add - The Fry 1000 is a sight word list. Very similar to Dolch but more words. Here's a link if anyone is interested. http://www.uniqueteachingresources.com/Fry-1000-Instant-Words.html Thanks in advance. Rhonda P.S. - Can someone tell me how to change my profile from Just Visiting? I've been registered for 2 years. I emailed administrators, but no one has responded. Thanks.

My DS will be 9 tomorrow. Not dyslexic as far as I know, but struggles with reading. We transitioned with short chapter books with pictures. The Magic Tree House series and the Magic School Bus series. Prior to that I did a read aloud with no pictures (one of the Little House books), so he got used to the idea of story with no pictures. It worked for us. He does a novel study on a chapter book every week. That's a huge step in the right direction for us.

You have described my son completely. He will be 9 on Sunday and is in the third grade, but doing 2nd grade level reading and math. He's very good at recognizing words because he has a great memory, but of course that doesn't make him fluent at all. When I encountered the off topic issue, I would try to bring his focus back to the text. My son would also make a big deal out of a little thing in the story. That was actually a little more common for him than to go off topic. He would become very frustrated and tell me I wasn't listening to him, so I decided to stop trying to refocus (as I call it). I now choose to just discuss the story as we go along. We talk about the characters, what they might have been thinking when they did certain things, I always discuss new vocabulary and make it a point to mark the page with a sticky note so we can come back and "pick up" that word for review. I keep my iPad handy so that if I need help with a picture I can pull one up. For example, we were reading one of the Little House books and there was a point in story where they were salting pork for the winter. I was having trouble describing that, so I pulled up a quick picture of what salted pork was. In another book, there was an Egyptian funeral procession. My son has never been to a funeral or seen a procession, so I pulled up a few pictures of processions. That adds the visual aspect that he's missing from picture books now that he's reading chapter books. We don't do it a lot, but at least once or twice during our nightly read aloud time. We do an oral review of the discussion questions and I find that he does better at answering that way. I do continue to give him written questions. He is doing much better with those than he was, but I try to use both as it helps with expressive speech, so I'm addressing two things at the same time.

I have an update. My iPad has been dead. I took it to the Apple store this weekend because I wanted to get the book by Ronit Bird and I see it's only available in iBooks. I picked it up today, downloaded a flashcard app with the intention of having my son drill and memorize, because I've found out from doing some research that memorization isn't a bad thing to do with addition facts. So I give him the iPad to do addition drills. First of all, he knew quite a few of the facts right off. As the numbers got higher - 6, 7 and 8's) he started closing his eyes and picturing the answers. He didn't use his fingers at all. I feel like I'm talking about a different kid. I swear I've never seen him do that. Every time he has math to do on a worksheet he starts counting on his fingers, or using the Abacus but with the cards he used mental math. Isn't that interesting? I don't know why I'm surprised. He surprises me all the time. I'm going to read Bird's book and start playing some of those math games with him. I also spiraled back to base blocks and number lines today. I am waiting for the Reflex Math folks to approve me for a trial. He really likes math so getting him to do it is not a problem. He hated it when he was in regular school.

Hi Sandy, Thank you. He's more of a visual and tactile learner. Kinesthetic too, but not auditory. I tried Touch Math with him, but he didn't like the idea of touching dots. I'm trying to limit screen time a bit, but I'll look at Reflex Math and will definitely look at the article. Thanks again.

I'm a published novelist and I wouldn't have done that. LOL. She has a gift. You don't need to add structure, but I do recommend she study the elements of fiction writing; character, plot, theme, setting, etc. You can do that by having her read the classics and complete novel studies, so she's thinking about those elements. I agree poetry study would be beneficial for her. When she's older you can find a creative writing course for her. This is really awesome.

Thanks for the welcome. The evaluation he is having includes auditory processing, cognitive functioning, memory function, language and attention. I was thinking maybe down the line. He is on the waiting list for testing through Child Find, but I made this appointment because I didn't want to wait 6 months for the school system. Now I'm thinking I may do that. 6 months is not that long. I waited 9 months for the Marcus Autism Center and we are making really good progress. I'm thinking I'll be even more knowledgeable about what I'm seeing as a parent if I wait. I'm still learning about him myself. I'll look at that book. I've spent most of my time reading about phonics programs. Now I need to do my research about math. He has a great memory. He might be able to memorize the addition and subtraction facts. I really appreciate the feedback.