Any title suggestions for a Ramona-lover? Here are the qualities we like: * silly, but not overly so * not historical, but modern day setting * realistic and relatable * simple plot/story lines * not too fast-moving We've got the Henry Huggins books already. Thanks for any ideas!

Don't be discouraged about blending. There is no magic bullet for some kids. Just practice, practice practice. My 9yo is now blending fluently (when she doesn't get the letters/sounds mixed up) but it took about 2 years of practice. It was not linear progress. It was very up and down. Keep practice sessions short, just a couple minutes, esp. if working memory is an issue. We do things such as tracking the time to read a certain number of words, and trying to beat the time. Or, read for 2 minutes and track the # of words read. You can also look up "rapid naming" as a path to fluency. I'd also stop having g-ma help w/practice and instead let dd brag to her, or only read things that are very easy.

Our local state college's music degree is a four years program whether you transfer in or not. So if you do two years at the CC you'll spend 6 years on your degree. And it's not an elite program. However it wouldn't hurt to take a variety of CC classes while in high school to get a feel for what she'd like to study. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Seconding the Spelling Success games. They are a great way to get really familiar w/the rules/rule names, by just using them a lot, spotting the patterns. You could make lists of words that cover all the rules, mixed up, then have her tell you what rules are used for each one. Here's an idea I just thought of that I might try... give my student two rules, and have her create a word that uses both those rules. It's good to be able to verbalize the rules. But you could certainly go on to Level 5, and just review whatever you feel still needs some review. The nice thing about reviewing previous levels is that it feels easy to the student, so you can spend a couple minutes a day on it and it's not stressful.

I agree w/OneStep. They are also a pain to cut out. They're Bingo, and a simple board game, and my girls do enjoy them. But the Spelling Success games are much cheaper, and they're glossy heavy cards like "real cards".

Wow! That's pretty amazing. I'd post in the Learning Difficulties forum if I were you. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

No she can't spell orally either. She does good with Barton, I need to sometimes remind her of rules but sometimes she remembers them herself. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Dry erase sounds like a great idea. Thanks! I am breaking up the writing ... We do just 15 minutes per day of Barton. So the last two days were just one sentence each session. Yesterday's sentence ... "He'll summon the falcon"... Involved a couple minutes each for: repeating the sentence a few times, making a mental image of what the sentence was talking about, contraction review, defining summon, defining falcon. I could instead just say "He'll... it's a contraction of he will; .. summon... The... Falcon", pausing to let her write each word. It would go faster. But I felt hopeful that maybe her recall was getting better. :( It was discouraging. I'm working on getting evals through our charter school. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

9yodd has pretty severe dyslexia, and other learning issues. She has a tough time w/making mistakes when writing, whether it's leaving out a letter, reversal, etc. I hate that whole "scribble it out" thing, and was taught to strike out your word with a line through it, then start again, so you don't have a big black storm cloud in your writing. But, I think she doesn't want to see her mistake at all. She'll try to mark it out completely, or try to convert the mistaken letter into the correct one (takes quite a bit of effort sometimes), or just write the correct one over it so you can't tell which was the one she meant.... I don't get why it's such a big deal to her when she needs to correct.... I don't make a big deal about it. She's also so much more concerned with the neatness of her letters than with the words she wrote. Using pencil helps, but doesn't take away all the issues... Anyway, anyone else's kid have this issue? Any tips? She's painstakingly slow, between dyslexia, and wanting to be neat, and not being able to remember the sentence/word she's writing.... We're on sentences in Barton write now, and an entire sentence takes usually 15 minutes.

Hugs and I hear ya about the sadness. it gets better. Re: the videos, I've probably said this before but i watch them on 1.5x speed. OR, I watch them on regular speed WITH my kid. Not expecting them to get it all, but at least they get the idea and it's somewhat familiar before we start. Interesting, though, my one dd who struggles LESS finds the video interesting, but the one who really needs Barton doesn't track with the video and wanders away pretty quickly. But at least I don't have to wait until they're in bed or occupied to watch it.

Wow. Is there a book, or what would you recommend to learn more without taking the seminar yet?

My dyslexic dd does great memorizing things with context. But anything else, without meaning to her, it's instantly forgotten. I don't see the point of studying sight words as lists right now (she's 9). However, she can read them so that's comforting to me. We do use Barton, we just skip the sight word spelling section. (save a lot of time!) We work really hard to memorize things such as Bible verses, or other things, with hand motions, mnemonics, whatever it takes, as long as she's engaged and motivated it works. It takes a long time, but it will stick. I imagine we'll have to do something similar w/sight words. My dd also has very poor visual memory. I think that's why sight words, even w/Barton's method, don't stick. I really like Lindamood-Bell's Seeing Stars, and we'll probably do something like that for sight words. One day......

I think when Susan Barton talks about how long to do something, the context is a tutor who spends an hour 3x/week with a student. So, don't worry about how long she says to do things. We did fluency drills for 2-3 minutes each session: Either "how many words can you read in 2 minutes" (usually on the first time thru a new page) or "How long will it take you to read 1 column" (then recording a time to beat). They really worked, but it took months. My girls were younger when they started Barton (7). We dropped sight word spelling (the cards) after a while. I figure I will come back to them when they're older, and have had a lot more repeated exposure to those words in reading. If there's a sight word in the dictated phrases/sentences, I just tell them how to spell it. That has saved a lot of time. But, we did the sight word fluency pages which worked great. My severely dyslexic girl spent about a year on level 3. She is a few lessons into level 4 and it's going faster now. Don't rush. Putting time pressure on your child doesn't help at all. There's no hurry. We've done just 15-20 minutes 3-4 days per week, and I've found that to be enough to make steady progress. I don't think doing more would have helped dd to read faster, honestly. It would have burned her out.

I haven't read the whole thread, but does anyone else think EFL reminds you a LOT of Charlotte Mason? I'd be interested if anyone's compared the two.

I had a girl like that (she's now 17). Once she could read, we stopped reading instruction and she just read aloud until it was obvious she could read accurately when reading silently. Some early longer books she enjoyed: Boxcar Children, those (ridiculous) Rainbow Fairies books, James & the Giant Peach (short chapters), Homer Price.

Don't know if this would appeal to you, but my dd did not pass the Barton screening (I don't think she passed any of it), and we just started Barton level 1 without doing LIPS, and she just learned what she needed as we went. Sometimes we repeated lessons, went really slowly, etc. It wasn't easy. My experience with her has not been a linear progression; she never mastered one thing before moving on to the next, but now it's been about 1.5 yrs of consistent Barton use, and she has improved in her reading a LOT. She still has a bit of trouble w/rhyming but it's better, and it has not held her back from progressing. I think if I had focused solely on rhyming/phonemic awareness for very long, we would have both gone crazy. So it's been better to just hit all skills from different angles, at the same time. She also goes to Scottish Rite which works on a little bit different stuff.

Does anyone have tips for teaching this? My girls have trouble not hearing/thinking, for example, that AIR would be spelled AY-ER. or PAIL would be PAY-UL. Although short vowels followed by L, such as PAL, seem to be OK. We are in Barton level 4 lesson 14, so haven't gotten to R-controlled vowels yet. I admit I haven't watched the videos for this level yet so maybe SB has some great ideas I haven't come across.

Boil with water and a bit of Oxyclean.

I second the 6qt roaster oven. You can brown stuff in it (a little slower than a skiller), and the temp is much more versatile. It's also a lot lighter since it's all metal, not stoneware. But get the glass lid. My enamel lid is peeling.

It will get easier! Yes, the steps are a lot at the beginning. It will pay off. If he doesn't have any trouble with b/d, skip it. The "p" seems silly if he doesn't have trouble w/p, but it will make the rest of the mnemonic make sense. We did just 15 minutes a day. Now we're up to 20 in our 3rd year of Barton. That helps. Slow and steady.... I never worry about "I hate this"... yes, things that are hard, we usually hate. hang in there.

Something that might help w/fluency, assuming there aren't any other issues, is reading lists of words over and over. Just do it for 2-3 minutes. After she tries it and you have an idea of how hard or easy it is, set little goals such as "read __ words in 2 minutes" or "improve the time it takes to read all 100 words" etc. It should take several days to reach the goal. Then start again with new lists of slightly harder words. I don't know if the reading program you used had lists of words you could use. If not, take some lists from another reading program. We used a program that had lists of words (TATRAS). I think she'll get a lot more decoding practice that way, and in a shorter time, than by reading from a reader. Just an idea, I'm not an expert at all, but over time it helped all my kids with fluency, even the dyslexic one (but it took her a lot longer).

Watching the videos was a big hindrance for me too. My solutions: 1. Watch them with the kids. Not that they'll get it all, but a) it won't hurt them and you don't have to use precious non-kid time, b) they may get something out of them. This actually really helped one of my kids. I still went thru the lesson, but they got the idea a lot quicker. (echoing a PP) 2. I was able to watch them at 1.5x speed on my dvd player, and got thru them a lot quicker. You can skip a fair amount once you get the idea. After 1.5 years of teaching Barton I don't feel the need to watch the videos any more, but they reeeeally helped at the beginning.

I have felt for a long time that dd8 has auditory processing issues. The audiologist's testing only showed her as borderline. She has pretty severe phonemic weakness, but ti's gotten better over the years and with Barton. She is dyslexic. Anyway, she also has attention/focus issues, which I have always attributed to the auditory weakness. But, today it occurred to me that maybe it's ADHD-type difficulty instead. I wonder if anyone could share examples of what auditory processing without ADHD would look like, and with it? For example, she often gets oral directions mixed up, especially if I say them quickly or out of order (go do X, but first do Y). I've always thought it was because of auditory processing, because it involves listening. But maybe not. Sometimes a long instructional part of Barton, she can't follow/loses interest/doesn't seem to be listening. Again, auditory issues or ADHD, I'm wondering now.

I have a Blendtec and a Hamilton Beach food processor that was $28 on Amazon. I don't use it nearly as much as the blendtec but for the price it's worth having it for large grating and slicing jobs, and salsa, hummus and pesto which I just can't get the hang of in the Blendtec.

These are all great ideas... thank you for giving me some places to start! I haven't looked at any of these before.