My son is still wearing his size 12 pants and just bought a few new ones even though many are about an inch short right now because he's skinny. He recently started doing airsoft, there was nothing in shirts that fit him to buy a camo shirt, we found size 12 camo pants, he ended up wearing a camouflage shirt my husband had originally bought for me, female adult small or medium, I forget which. It is slightly big on him but not huge and crazy like some of the size 14s. He is also wearing my boots from when I was in the Air Force!! I had to reassure him several times that the boots were mens boots, not womens boots. He had no qualms about the shirt even though the logo is pink, LOL. I didn't mention the logo color to him, perhaps he thinks it is red, it is a darker pink. He probably could have fit into my old uniforms but I passed them along to friends in the Air Force.

I have a chart with the vowel teams, one of my students had so much trouble with ou the I made it red for him, ou ouch blood red. http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/OnePageVowelChart.pdf They learn the sounds with the color version, then on the black and white chart. I also teach along with it the normal spelling patterns for when each is used, within or at the end of a word or syllable: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/PL26VowelChart.pdf

I used Singapore and really liked it, it had a bit of number bonds early on but not many. Much of the common core math, like @ClemsonDana mentioned, looks like they took a few things from Singapore but didn't understand it, so badly implemented Singapore math. Singapore math is more incremental and logical, we had friends who had biological children who kept up fine after their private school switched from A Beka math to common core, but an adopted child who did not get much protein his first few years before adoption could not keep up with the jumps that were made in common core math, he had been doing fine with A Beka math. If his school does the normal sight words and balanced literacy, you may need to do some nonsense words in addition to normal phonics for reading. My syllables page has some tests at the end, the MWIA will show if you need nonsense words, he should not have a slowdown or miss more phonetic than holistic words, and should not miss more than a 2 - 3 words on either list. http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

Yes, clearly his fault or your fault, they couldn't be using a poor method or anything. Some children will struggle and need more repetition with any method but more children struggle with whole language based methods, and when you have a phonics foundation, at least there is no guessing to undo. I have had remedial boys overwhelmed by Spalding, but they don't guess, they just get overwhelmed and read slowly and have trouble figuring out which sound to use; with a switch to a normal phonics method they usually remediate easily with no guessing to un-train. I have not yet had a girl overwhelmed by Spalding, their brains seem to be able to handle the language overload better.

They have to keep changing the names of this stuff as parents find out and demand phonics. Whole language, whole word, balanced literacy, sight reading, etc. At least balanced literacy added in a bit of phonics, so a bit better, but still not great.

Yes, I agree! An added level of ridiculousness. It's called multi-cueing, and is a bad plan and leads to guessing. But try talking most teachers out of it, harder than getting someone to change their religious or political views. There is even a whole book about miscues, where they explain it (but the explanation made no sense to me) and explain the difference between a high quality and low quality miscue. They are all bad miscues to me, just teach phonics and then you don't have to worry about miscues. They argue, "but aren't more more options better?" No, they're not. Just teach the one that works reliably and doesn't lead to guessing. I wish I was making up this book, but it is real and often assigned in teacher training, "Miscue Analysis Made Easy." https://www.amazon.com/Miscue-Analysis-Made-Easy-Strengths/dp/0325002398/ref=sr_1_2?crid=12XBTCS2YG5FA&keywords=miscue+analysis+made+easy+building+on+student+strengths&qid=1568681955&s=gateway&sprefix=miscue+%2Caps%2C187&sr=8-2

Spelling Plus has much of the info from The ABCs and All their Tricks and focuses on the most common 1,000 words. I would get both books and work on the words in Spelling Plus with Lori D's ideas. She has a companion book Spelling Dictation with dictation sentences using the words. You could also try Apples and Pears and their methods. I would focus on the 1,000 most common words, putting words back into the mix for review as needed.

You don't have to explain, but if you want to, you can say that autism presents differently in girls.

You're welcome! My daughter drew most of the bookmarks at several years ago. She is planning to major in Graphic Design at college next year, her drawing skills are even more impressive now. I can barely draw a stick figure, all the drawing talent comes from my husband's side of the family.

Hanford's previous article about reading is also good: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read And here are some videos explaining how the brain reads, seeing it in a video is fascinating. Most of the videos feature neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, his book "Reading in the Brian" is also good, but some things make more sense with video instead of pictures and words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYZBi_07vk&list=PLJLxBWdK_5l1u9v4FTXD3CXgCBIGeSZpM

Emily Hanford's latest article is great to share: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading And, if they are being sent home lists of sight words, how and why to teach them with phonics instead (better for the way the brain learns to read, less guessing habits.) http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/sightwords.html I now have cute bookmarks on my sight word page for parents that have to teach them, better and easier to teach them with the phonetic sight word bookmarks if you have to teach them out of order at all. I also have a YouTube video for how teachers can change their teaching of reading to be more in line with science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8su8WB0h9s

I get GI symptoms, nausea, and shakiness from food allergies. It usually starts as GI symptoms and adds on more symptoms with time or larger amounts. I am allergic to cow's milk but tolerate sheep milk yoghurt and sheep cheese. The GI symptoms are moderated if I take vitamin C powder during and after eating, I am allergic to so many things now I have to have it with every meal, but when I was allergic to less I found it helped after an accidental ingestion of a food I was moderately allergic to that caused GI symptoms, Some of the other brands have things added to them that I'm allergic to, this is the powder that works the best, it really helps moderate the symptoms. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B7V2FI6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Actually goes back to the 1800's! There was a period of whole word teaching from 1826 to 1876. In the early 1800's and previous, everyone that learned to read learned with syllables, Quintillion even mentions syllables!! Whole language was found to be inferior with a large survey by Rice in the 1800's, then again and again and again each time it was tried, but it is strangely compelling to the people in the education schools for some reason. In the 1800's it was syllables in English, but until the 16th Century, people learned to read in Latin first with syllables, then in their native language with syllables. Here is a the history of reading instruction with a timeline: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/historyofreading.html And more about syllabic phonics and its history: https://infogalactic.com/info/Syllabic_phonics Because it was taught in one room schools and it is actually pretty easy teach if you've watch the teachers teach it 5 or 6 times in a row in your one room school, there are no teacher's manuals explaining how to teach people to read with a Speller. The most extensive writing I've found about how it was taught is in the education section of the Slave Narratives, I've compiled most of the references here: http://thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/

A short summary of science before or after teaching it at the 7th grader's level that the 1st grader sits in on, plays for rest of time. What was appropriate science for a 7th grader would have been different for each of mine.

My daughter, who is good at everything else LA, for some reason did not pick up vocabulary from reading without explicit instruction in how to do that. I used the 1879 McGuffey readers. There are PDFs online, you can print out a few passages and try it, you need the PDF version. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5671 At first, we read vocabulary definitions at the end of the passage, then read the whole passage, then went over each sentence with a difficult word and discussed how you could figure it out from context. Then, she did that on her own. Then, she read the passage first and tried to figure out the words' meaning, reading the definitions afterward. You can take a few weeks or months on each step as needed until they learn to infer vocabulary from context on their own. The McGuffey passages cover a wide range of genres and have interesting vocabulary. You can also do word root study, my game is a fun way to learn word roots, play the bingo game, read out definitions as they look up the words. Explained and linked from my syllables page, instructions in how to use the syllables lessons videos, not actual syllables lessons, bingo files on syllables page. http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html