My DS takes Ritalin ER in the morning and sometimes an afternoon IM dose, but when the drug is wearing off he is absolutely sluggish. Like the drug has been pumping him up all day and all of a sudden he is exhausted. I think it also has to do with the fact that he doesn't eat while the ritalin working. Once I can get him to eat, he usually regains some energy. My DS also has some trouble with agitation and melt-downs in general - usually before the meds have taken effect and certainly once the effects are wearing down. His psych started him on Kapvey twice a day to help with that. It does seem to help him some with this. It's a BP medicine, and is also supposed to help with winding down and getting to sleep. Anyways, I feel for you and your DS. This journey can be so difficult sometimes.

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Oh yes, I completely agree with this. I get to worrying about whether we're doing enough now -- for now we are, as long as I am diligent and self-disciplined. But then I worry about the long term scope of school and have to remind myself that we are doing this one year at a time - often one month, week or day at a time.

Oh yes, I completely agree with this. I get to worrying about whether we're doing enough now -- for now we are, as long as I am diligent and self-disciplined. But then I worry about the long term scope of school and have to remind myself that we are doing this one year at a time - often one month, week or day at a time.

This makes sense to me. Also by the time a child has a foundation in phonics, they are able to decode many "sight" words, right? We are still very early in the reading process, even through we've been trudging for years, but one thing that really helped my son is tons of fluency practice with words he knew how to decode. Words, phrases, and sentences. And the sentences are written in phrases -- so like the who phrase, then the next line down and the who phrase repeats and adds the did what phrase, then the next line adds the where phrase. Reading these words over and over again really helped him. With him, it's hard for me to determine what is the apraxia and what is the dyslexia, but all this fluency practice is really helping him.

I did Barton for a while with my oldest. I got through most of level 3 before we switched programs, but while we were doing it the charter school's special ed teacher wanted him to do Read Naturally program also. I emailed Susan Barton and she said that it was a bad idea to add it to Barton.

This is what we do for most things that require more than 20 minutes. So mainly with reading right now. I do 20 minutes with my oldest, 20 minutes with my middle, and then repeat. I can't do much of anything longer than 20 minutes without my kids completely losing focus, or melting down.

My son sounds pretty similar. I started off our homeschooling journey trying to do Charlotte Mason type schooling. Total failure. I have found that he does best with lessons that have a clear purpose, expectations, and end goal. So complete a worksheet, read this story, write a sentence, etc. We are using AAR - just starting level 2, and will be starting AAS soon. Once he has covered about 2/3 of AAR 2 I hope to be able to use MP's Storytime Treasures with him for practice with reading real literature, basic grammar, reading comprehension, sentence composition, vocabulary, etc. But it's really up in the air whether or not he'll be ready to read the stories. For handwriting, we are using a copybook and new american cursive 1 from Memoria Press. We're going to try out Core Skills Language Arts grade 1, but I'm not too sure about it. It seems to cover grammar topics shallowly rather than achieving mastery. We've just started a writing program (only at the sentence level) that seems promising, but we will see. My plan is to start Rod & Staff grammar when my daughter begins 2nd grade materials for much more in depth grammar coverage. Some kids seem to pick up on things automatically without being explicitly taught (my daughter for example). My son doesn't pick up anything that has anything to do with language on his own. So I'm finding that everything needs to be practiced and practiced and over-learned.

I don't have much in the way of advice, but I wanted to let you know that you are not alone in this struggle. My middle child has now outpaced (by a good amount) her older brother and it definitely frustrating for him. We have discussed that every person is made differently and his brain works differently than his sisters. That sometimes it is really frustrating that his brain works differently and sometimes it is pretty cool. But I emphasize that God makes each of us a particular way for a particular reason. We may not know what His reasons are but we can be confident that there is one. I also try to emphasize that he has other gifts -- being good at math, ability to internalize complicated information (like a baseball teams roster, line-up, and general baseball strategies). I have been having my daughter read aloud from an easy reader as part of our bedtime routine and my son wanted to participate also. It is really difficult for him that he is no where close to being able to read what she can read. I think the key is going to be to find readers that he is able to read.

Since Rod & Staff doesn't have a kindergarten level, some programs us R&S 1 for both K and 1st. So the worksheets can be helpful in making it stretch two years. We've done the curriculum straight through (not trying to make it last 2 years) and we've used some of the worksheets, but not many. Some of them are helpful to have, such as the blank forms for the flash card drills, or fact houses, but they are not critical. They also aren't very expensive though. You certainly wouldn't need to have your child do the workbook and all the worksheets in one lesson. It would be more for a lesson one day, worksheets the next type thing, imo.

The kindergarten enrichment has 5 sections. The read aloud -- this is the read-aloud package that MP sells. The enrichment guide has questions and activities particular to these books. A science topic and a history/social studies/culture topic. Probably about 2/3 of the time there is a suggested book to go with these -- these are from the supplemental science & social studies package. These books are picked because they are age appropriate, good books applicable to the topic. But you could use any book on the topic. Then there is a music and art selection. They have just come out with a new K-2 music guide so the selections in that guide and the enrichment guide don't line up right now. Whenever they reprint the enrichment guide, it will be changed. The enrichment guide lists read aloud as Monday, music & art as Tuesday, Poetry as Wednesday, Thursday as History, and Friday as science. You could do them in any order you wanted. We've done most of the K book and are moving into the 1st soon. We don't get to everything each week. It just depends. We do it as a morning time type thing but in the afternoon after our table work is finished.

We are just finishing MP K and love it. For phonics you would need First Start Reading and Classical Phonics. Core Skills Phonics is extra phonics worksheets that kids can do mostly independently. FSR could possibly be enough. You can see the table of contents for the Core Skills books at Rainbow Resource. FSR incorporates writing into learning to read which I really like. For most of the year, only the red primary phonics readers and the first American Language Series, Fun in the Sun, are used. So you could start with buying only those if you wanted. The American Language Series are really great. They give longer stories and seem a bit more grown up. You could substitute different ones for the Primary Phonics Readers. We liked the number books, but they aren't critical. The copybook covers one scripture verse a week, so it isn't a lot of writing. They are nice, but you could easily create your own copywork.

Thanks for the responses. His last eval didn't show memory issues. His working memory was the poorest of his scores I believe. I think he often is concentrating so much on how to spell the word, he forgets the sentence. But he is getting better I think. I tend to be so unsure of myself, doubting whether I am doing the right thing, but I think I will just push on repeating the sentence tons of times. He is using the HearBuilder software as part of his speech therapy, so I think that should be helpful. It works on processing auditory information and memory. He has had a CAPD eval and passed for the most part, but his arcticulation was really poor when he did that so he couldn't complete all the tests.

So I have one more question about Barton. I'm on lesson 2 of level 3 with my son, we're going VERY slowly, but he's getting it for the most part. When we do spelling phrases and sentences, I have to repeat them over and over again. Is this normal? I always say the phrase or sentence in its entirety rather than telling him which word to say when. But I feel like I am likely doing more guiding that Susan Barton recommends. Of course my guy is not "just" a typical dyslexic. Thank you!

Ha yes, I wish we could have more babies, but my head is barely ahead of water as it is. I do have some envy of really large families, though. Alas, it is not to be. NC does has disability funding, but to qualify the child has to have been in a NC public school for the previous semester (or be in K or 1st). So I'd have to enroll him in school for 1/2 a year. That's not going to happen, especially with the state of education in NC right now. I've been so lucky to homeschool here in CA through a charter school. They paid for his Barton tutor, some OT, and some good speech therapy.