Or digging a big ditch for a sump pump after the yard floods when they're gone. Just sayin...

It will take a while to get results, my students took between 200 - 500 nonsense words before their speeds started to improve (I made them record the minutes and seconds it took to read the group of 50 words and give it to me, they got small prizes for turning in their times.) Focus on accuracy, not speed, speed will come with time. You can post any improvements here or PM me or e-mail me. I'm interested in non results, too, to get an idea of what speeds of silent reading of regular text and oral reading of nonsense words are not subject to improvement. Adult results are appreciated, too, although I don't want non results for adults reading above 400 WPM, I would expect a ton of non results from that to clog up my PM box. You can fill up the thread with non results for adults, though. Also, no non results for children reading above 500 WPM are necessary in PMs, but can be posted in the thread. You can also e-mail no results responses if you want, I don't have to clear that out. Thanks!

Many of you may have educated your children too well to be of any help!! But, I have a theory that some people reading less than 500 WPM will be helped by improving their response time for sound/letter correspondences, especially the 2 letter vowel teams, and daily training with 50 nonsense words per day to improve oral accuracy and reading speed. (School week daily, you don't have to do them on the weekend.) This is based off of mainly my remedial students. However, a few students who read well but joined my class just for spelling and vocabulary improved their oral reading speed after completion. From an understanding from recent brain research implying that words are processed as sounds in parallel, I'm thinking that even 1/10 of a second improvement per sound will translate to significant reading speed improvement overall. You can either do the entire program linked below, 3 to 7 hours to complete, and 50 timed nonsense words per day, goal is 100% accuracy and 100 WPM orally. Or, just the nonsense words and review of any sounds such as ch that are slow and 2 letter vowel teams. The second half of the program includes word roots and multi-syllable words, the first half is phonics basics. (The first half also includes syllable division with 2 syllable nonsense words.) The schedule, student folder #1, should make the progression clear if you want to skip anything. Do the tests before and after, I will be interested to see if silent reading speed improves afterwards, and if it is correlated to oral reading speed of nonsense words or not. It may also take a few months of nonsense words to help and see results. You can reuse the words after you complete the 10 pages, and I am working on another one with more words. (The optional nonsense words #6 from the teacher folder, they are not optional for improving reading speed, they were optional homework for the last class I taught and the students who used them improved the most, both oral reading speed and reading grade level improvement.) Here is how I teach for the vowel chart, 2 letter vowel teams. I teach them in color first with the key, then without the key, then in black and white. I do not require AE or UY to be memorized, there are only a few words with those patterns, and only teach the ou/ow as in out sound of ou. I go in color order with pairs, native words don't end in i, ai/ay long a, ea, ee long e, igh long i, oa/oe long o, native english words don't end in a, ui/ue. Then, blue pairs, then au/aw and ou/ow, native english words don't end in u, then oi/oy. I teach both sounds of oo. Also, ei/ey long a as in vein and they. I also have them memorize the short e sound of ea, a lot of words have that pattern. You may need to teach the 2nd sound of ou for an older student. (soup) http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html If you are already reading the last group of nonsense words, mixed nonsense words, pages 8 - 10, at 100 WPM or more with 100% accuracy, this probably won't improve your reading speed. I have a silent reading speed test based on War of the Worlds for older students and for children, selections from “The Burgess Animal Book for Children.†But, the online staples one is easier to use to give you an idea. For a valid before and after comparison, use the paper test for before and after. http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/

An inner spring mattress futon is as comfy as a bed and looks like a couch when not being used as a bed, and would look better with low ceilings.

I read an article that I can't find now that states that the half life of coffee was 14 hours on average for women vs 8 hours for men. The current articles I could find only focused on higher half life for women on oral contraceptives. There were several other interesting articles about all the things that influence coffee's half life.

Good country song title, too! (And I only like a few country songs but I would like that one!!)

I list my work jobs, which end in 2002, then this: Director, 40L 2010 - Present (7 years) X Area Nonprofit Director. Volunteer literacy tutor since 1994. Creates 40L's educational material. Conducts classes for 40L, working in conjunction with churches and para-church organizations throughout the United States. 40L has no paid staff and is run entirely by volunteers. (I went with 2010 - present because that is the year we incorporated as a non-profit.) I also joined "The Nonprofit Times" group but don't read much of it or post to the group.

I would ask on chalkbucket, too, although people here also may have good ideas, the higher levels do generally homeschool. https://www.chalkbucket.com/forums/forums/mens-artistic-gymnastics-mag.146/

That sounds crazy in daylight!! Of course, they most hopefully have NVGs, my husband has flown at night with NVGs and says you can see pretty well.

I would also try to figure out different strategies and see what works best--reading the questions first or not, taking notes or not, don't just give up on them, they may need to be practiced a few times to be helpful, for example, notes could be improved with a good shorthand system or shorter words or phrases, and it may take a while for reading the questions first to help. Also, see if the notes can be directly written on the passage or not if that is allowed and best note placement, you could also underline or star wars, sentences, or phrases. You may also want to compare the SAT and see how its timing compares, I think it used to have a better time limit for the amount of reading but don't know about the new one.

I have found nonsense words and syllables helpful for improving my students' oral reading speed, and I assume their silent reading speed as well but have never directly measured that. Do the entire program here, 3 to 7 hours to complete, and 50 timed nonsense words per day, goal is 100% accuracy and 100 WPM orally. Accuracy first, speed will come with time and practice. Do all the tests before and after, I will be interested to see if silent reading speed improves afterwards, and if it is correlated to oral reading speed of nonsense words or not. It may also take a few months of nonsense words to help and see results. You can reuse the words after you complete the 10 pages, and I am working on another one with more words. (The optional nonsense words #6 from the teacher folder.) I would also have him improve his speed on sounds for the vowel chart, 2 letter vowel teams. Even a microsecond of improvement per letter or letter team adds up over the long run, these are typically the things my students have the longest delay with, but any other letters where the sound recognition is slow should be studied. I teach them in color first with the key, then without the key, then in black and white. I do not require AE or UY to be memorized, there are only a few words with those patterns, and only teach the ou/ow as in out sound of ou. I go in color order with pairs, native words don't end in i, ai/ay long a, ea, ee long e, igh long i, oa/oe long o, native english words don't end in a, ui/ue. Then, blue pairs, then au/aw and ou/ow, native english words don't end in u, then oi/oy. I teach both sounds of oo. Also, ei/ey long a as in vein and they. I also have them memorize the short e sound of ea, a lot of words have that pattern. You may need to teach the 2nd sound of ou for a high schooler. (soup) http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html Here is an ESL comprehension resource from a friend/mentor of Don Potter, he also used it for non ESL students who needed explicit help in that area, it is in both English and Spanish, keep scrolling through if it switches to Spanish: http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/gonzalez_materials.pdf I found these helpful for my daughter who struggled with inference, we skipped to level 2 and some of the early exercises even in the level 2 book, but they all looked good, she just didn't need the first few books or the first bit of book 2: https://classicalacademicpress.com/subject/reasoning-reading/ Also, try to figure out what the challenge is--underlying specific vocabulary of the subject, problem with inference, problem with long sentences where you have to figure out the use of "but" or "and" or things like that, then isolate and work on problem area. I had a dyslexic student whose father read so slowly he had to take notes while he was reading to keep from forgetting what he had just read, but he read accurately, he had had good phonics training. After I fixed the son's guessing problems and taught him the phonics he had not yet learned, he was still reading slowly, but more accurately and not quite as slow, he went from 8 WPM to 14 WPM oral reading speed. Once he could read accurately and had learned all his phonics, he could read anything slowly, but he had a great memory, he did not need to take notes and did well with reading comprehension.

My husband was a pilot in the Air Force. Homeschooling was great for his schedule! We went on a few close trips with him, and a few of his training weeks. There are a ton of military homeschoolers, and I have been a volunteer tutor since 1994; after my 3rd remedial child I told my husband that we needed to homschool or consider a private school that taught phonics at least until the kids were reading well, and we did not yet have kids. I once had a neighbor tell me my kids were better socialized than his kids, LOL, he did not know about the stigma...this was after his daughter finally got more time to play when testing prep ended...back when both our daughters were in 4th grade. She had homework and tutoring that kept her working until bedtime every school night for months before yearly testing. (We had homeschool friends down the block and a few other friends that played almost daily, he would see them walking back and forth.) I teach phonics to the 12th grade level, my mom went from being suspicious of homeschooling to bragging to everyone that her grandaughter could read "War and Peace." My dad was very supportive, he had recently retired from teaching in a good public school, that actually made him a big fan. My favorite conventional phonics program is Phonics Pathways, it teaches to a 4th grade level and is idiot proof. My 12th grade level takes a bit more work and study to use, I will add a link soon. If they are doing sight words in school, you will need my nonsense word game to undo guessing habits, at the same link and very easy to use and understand, free to print or make. http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/WellTaughtPhonicsStudent.html

Tis is part if the reasn that I now think B first, and my exercises start with all uppercase, overlearn that, then all lowercase.

I would teach the sound letter correspondences with LiPS. For a struggling student, the more modalities you can work and the more repetition you can get in early, the better.

Here is a book you can order that has vision therapy exercises. Any that are hard are what you need to work on! https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Ocular-Visual-Perceptual-Skills/dp/1556425953/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1486849669&sr=8-13&keywords=vision+therapy She can watch my online phonics lessons and work through this to improve her reading grade level if she is reading below 12th grade level: http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonicslsnslinks.html http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html Let her do her creativity on her own and just count it later as school without telling her it is school!! For some creative people, being forced to do something sucks all the joy out of it. Make it independent study writing or art or whatever she ended up doing, and give appropriate amount of credit for time spent, 1/2 credit or 1 credit depending on hours worked. Here is an ESL comprehension resource from a friend/mentor of Don Potter, he also used it for non ESL students who needed explicit help in that area, it is in both English and Spanish, keep scrolling through if it switches to Spanish: http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/gonzalez_materials.pdf I found these helpful for my daughter who struggled with inference, we skipped to level 2 and some of the early exercises even in the level 2 book, but they all looked good, she just didn't need the first few books or the first bit of book 2: https://classicalacademicpress.com/subject/reasoning-reading/ Also, try to figure out what the challenge is--underlying specific vocabulary of the subject, problem with inference, problem with long sentences where you have to figure out the use of "but" or "and" or things like that, then isolate and work on problem area.

Videos for science and history? Science and history that is picture heavy? Real Science 4 Kids is picture heavy and has short lessons. People can suggest picture heavy or video history. Here is the science website, you can look at samples. http://gravitaspublications.com

Here is an ESL comprehension resource from a friend/mentor of Don Potter, he also used it for non ESL students who needed explicit help in that area, it is in both English and Spanish, keep scrolling through if it switches to Spanish: http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/gonzalez_materials.pdf I found these helpful for my daughter who struggled with inference, we skipped to level 2 and some of the early exercises even in the level 2 book, but they all looked good, she just didn't need the first few books or the first bit of book 2: https://classicalacademicpress.com/subject/reasoning-reading/ Also, try to figure out what the challenge is--underlying specific vocabulary of the subject, problem with inference, problem with long sentences where you have to figure out the use of "but" or "and" or things like that, then isolate and work on problem area. Typing for student who writes slow. More chores for kids? Non-monetary incentives for extra chores?

Phonics to a 12th grade level, free to print: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/WellTaughtPhonicsStudent.html My daughter was reading above grade level from early on, I used Webster with her and got her to a 12th grade level very early. But, we stuck with picture books when she was young. Just because a child CAN read War and Peace does not mean they are interested in or SHOULD read War and Peace.

:grouphug: It sounds like it is going well, some more ideas for days you are not up to a full lesson or want to do some reinforcement with games and videos: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html When she is a bit older, you can use my phonics videos for reinforcement, probably too long and boring for now. If she wants to try, split any over 15 minutes in half, watching half each day. http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonicslsnslinks.html

He may need reading comprehension help, or may just need to improve reading accuracy and speed. I have found nonsense words and syllables helpful for that. Do the entire program here, 3 to 7 hours to complete, and 50 timed nonsense words per day, goal is 100% accuracy and 100 WPM orally. Accuracy first, speed will come with time and practice. I have reading comprehension ideas next, work thorough this first and see what happens. Do all the tests before and after, I will be interested to see if silent reading speed improves afterwards, and if it is correlated to MWIA slowdown and oral reading speed of nonsense words or not. It may also take a few months of nonsense words to help and see results. You can reuse the words after you complete the 10 pages, and I am working on another one with more words. (The optional nonsense words #6 from the teacher folder.) http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

:grouphug: In the non-challenge areas, are there any video or fairly independent curriculum that could work? Combine history and science and some spelling/reading for the 2 that get along with something like Webster so there is the common basis of syllables? Read aloud on tape or through audible or the libravox or library audio books, again, can re use it with 2 and then 1 or play at meals. If you can afford it, help with cooking or cleaning or a teen to help with some of the easier teaching or whatever will help you them most.

Still in draft form for someone not used to teaching phonics, but good enough for any homeschool mom who has taught some phonics, free to print, takes 3 to 7 hours to work through: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html I have found the "optional" nonsense word 10 page document really powerful for progress. Time the words, do 50 words a day, measure accuracy and speed improvement. The goal is 100 words per minute orally with 100% accuracy.

I worked with a student whose apraxia made learning to read difficult, he needed explicit phonics help at an incremental level. CLE at half speed worked well with him working with his Mom, and I tailored my normal lessons with him based on his needs. In the interim, I will give a few links, but something like LiPS combined with OG reading is probably needed, and she may need a good tutor who understands both speech and phonics very well. I will add some links later for good things to work on in the interim. Diacritical markings were also very helpful for him. Start with pre-reading videos, have them watch them all 3 together: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJLxBWdK_5l3aBN-qowg2u8BdGYM64pTi Then, do phonemic awareness test: http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2013/02/free-phonological-awareness-test/ A working mom is not likely be able to fix phonemic awareness on their own, get speech therapist help, one trained in PROMPT and pro-phonics is best. Sight words can cause problems for any student, but are even more problematic for someone with an underlying problem, it is even more important to over-learn and automate phonics for them. Read, Write, Type is a good independent way to work on phonics basics once phonemic awareness is in place, and can be played with a bit while waiting for it to come, it waits for response and is not timed, fairly reasonable online price. http://www.talkingfingers.com/read-write-type/ Watch through my fun videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJLxBWdK_5l0Z941Cy1INrADEO9Sy4ZWz After phonemic awareness is in place, can watch through my regular phonics videos, boring but effective, have diacritical markings: http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonicslsnslinks.html He may need to watch any over 15 minutes by breaking them up into half, watching half a video per day. That is all my apraxia student could take. He has watched them through twice now and even when older had to pace them slower than most students. If she watches through the phonics lessons and my youtube movies with him, she should be able to work through this with him: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html If not, I can send a beta version of the DVD once I get the teacher tips done, the current beta is only for someone who does not need teaching help. But, again, a really good tutor who understands speech and phonics is most likely going to be needed.

I think Don Potter's hint will be helpful, and a link to some B/D then d/b exercises. http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/dbdb.html I actually think it is better to overteach B first but have not yet updated my exercises.

Spelling Plus and its companion book Spelling Dictation by Susan Anthony focus on the most common 1,000 words and group them by rule and pattern. My son was a grade level or two behind in spelling, after a year of 10 minutes daily working through the lists, he is now a grade level above in spelling. It is not too much work for me because it is all right there--in fact, that is why I bought it. I know all the rules but wanted it all there easy to use so I could use my time to focus on other things. It has gotten more independent as he has figured out how to study them on his own. He does fine without the dictation sentences so I don't use them, but for some people it does not translate into outside writing without the dictation book. She is a Christian but the books are secular. She has optional Biblical dictation sentences and some sentences from literature free online. http://www.susancanthony.com/bk/sp.html