She does about half her work at a table and half of it sprawling somewhere else (either holding the book up against her upraised legs or looking down at her lap or squatting next to the couch while the book is on the couch or something like that). Her grip was slightly worse at the table this morning (when we had so many tears trying to correct it), so we moved to the couch just to "relax" a little. She used to write so nicely, though she did always tilt her pencil lower and towards the bottom of her page instead of keeping it more level with her writing. She has always written more nicely than my other kids. But she's 7, so I just want to help her as writing demands increase on her down the road. And I found some articles with three good grips and three bad ones, but hers wasn't any of those, so I didn't really know where it fell. ?

She doesn't have articulation issues. But I was making these pom-poms, and just wanted to color them correctly. And she really enjoys figuring out how her body feels for various sounds. We just did the classification of brother consonants in LiPS, and I intended to just start with two pairs, but she loved it so much that she did all brother pairs in a single day. It was really funny watching her feel her mouth and nose and throat and ears and tongue and all of that as she worked on it. ?

Just trying to figure out if these are ok grips. It’s weird to me that she holds pencils differently than pens, but it’s very consistent and she is very resistant to changing her pencil grip to be more like her pen grip, and utterly resistant to using grips or other helps to curve her pointer finger knuckle in the other direction (away from the pencil instead of towards it). Her writing is average for age but she does say her hand tires. Her handwriting has been getting worse the last few months but she is able to write very well when she slows down. I guess I’m just trying to decide how much of a fight to make this. She also cries when I ask her to tilt her paper. Lol. Lots of tears in this house!

Just in case anyone else cares about the answer to my question above (and doesn't already know it! lol), the information is all here: https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/help/23/ Though some of it seems a bit funky. For example, they say that oy = or + i, not or + ee, but when you listen to the sound bit for i as in pit, they definitely pronounce it as peet...

I'd planned on doing Singapore 6 because I heard it had good probability/statistics content, but DS is really enjoying his dabbling in AoPS Pre-Algebra book. I'm considering nixing Singapore 6 in favor of just spot teaching a few topics so that he can move on to PreA sooner. Looking at the scope and sequence, it seems to mainly hit fractions/ratios/percents, volumes/areas, angles/basic geometry, and statistical analysis (mean/median/mode/outliers), and I notice that only the last point is something he's not seen a ton in BA (disclaimer: he does his BA completely independently, so I'm not actually a great judge of what he's seen in BA and what he hasn't). Is that more or less correct? ETA: He has finished Singapore 5B, but has not finished BA yet, and wants to finish BA while simultaneously starting the Prealgebra book.

I've been casually reading and working through the first few sections of AoPS Pre-A with ds9 this week, since he finished BA 4D book last week, but I wasn't prepared and hadn't ordered 5A for him yet. So last night, I told him (happily!) that his new BA should be here soon and then it's back to Beast and how fun! DS9: Aw... Me: What? You want to keep doing pre-algebra? DS9: Yeah. Me: How about we split it and do BA twice a week and PreA twice a week? DS9: I'd just rather to prealgebra every day. I just like it. Me: (laughing) Even when we end up doing it for an hour, like we did today, instead of the twenty minutes we set out to do, because the problems took so long? DS9: Honestly, Mom, the longer I do it, the more I like it. My husband couldn't contain an eyeroll and a mutter about this being someone else's child. lol.

Just another plug for checking both. When evaluated at 6, my dd has both vision problems (scoring under the 1st %ile in most areas) as well as phonological problems (scoring under the 9th %ile).

So back to the Pom pom video: I'm in the process of making these pom poms for my dd7 with dyslexia (and I'm really only going through all this work instead of using blocks since I figure I'll get to use them for dd5 and dd3 eventually as well), and am having a hard time finding all the information I want. In particular, she has these cool split balls (ch = t + sh, for example, and or + ee = oy), and I'm wondering if there is a resource out there that would list these combinations for me. I didn't see something like this in LiPS (just their wheel of vowels), and am not sure where else to look since I'm definitely not an SLP and don't know these things already. ? ETA and some of them, I flat out don't get and wonder if it's an Australian accent thing (like e + shwa = air???). I'm wondering if it's in the materials at http://marooneyfoundation.org/professional-learning.aspx but I paused reading it to go through LiPS instead.

Good informationa. Thank you very much!

Oooh, my best friend in hs had perfect pitch and it was often more of a curse than a blessing. For example: she learned her scat part for a very competitive jazz competition on a piano that (it turns out!) was slightly out of tune (half step off). She'd learned it so thoroughly and completely, however, that she could not adjust up the half step needed for her audition and she definitely lost the part! OTOH, my grandma has perfect pitch, and it sure makes her one heckuva violin player, so there are definite perks as well!

Oh good to know that EIC will be more streamlined! It's hard to tell from tiny little sample pages! lol. Also interesting to note that Fix It is considered elementary. On their website, they certainly claim that it goes through high school level grammar. ? But I suppose that depends on your student, huh? Thank you very much!

I was considering this. It has the perk of being free. I just wasn’t sure if it started from zero or not. He’s not at a zero, per se, because he’s done some basic grammar in German. But it’s very basic. ?

He liked Fred when he read a bunch two years ago but then felt that they got boring. He only read through F though.

In my looking, this seems very similar to the Fix-it that everyone raves about, but without the teachers manual. Does that seem about right (if you have any familiarity with fix it)?

My search feature in my phone is wonky again, so can someone point me to an AL grammar thread? In particular, ds9 signed up to take the psat 8/9 this year, and it seems to have some grammar on it. So I need something that is streamlined (he just wants to get ‘er done), complete and concise (I really don’t want to have to buy ten different workbooks to get a full grammar course), and explicit (ds has ASD and does not intuit grammar/anything, despite copious reading). Any ideas? PS. Preferably something independent... I’ve got three younger kids too. ?

They gave us no predictions, per se. They only ever suggest VT in increments of three months and then re-evaluate. So our re-evaluation is due in three weeks and then I feel like we’ll have more to go off of. Part of what is frustrating for me is the lack of good information from the place we’re actually going. No report for us with standardized scores of any sort or anything like that (like we did get from the other place because somehow insurance did work out to have our initial evaluation done there.) The place we’re going is a bit old school. On the one hand, it’s encouraging, because the doc has been a supporter of VT since the 80s, so I feel like they must know their stuff. On the other hand, they strike me as very disorganized/scatterbrained and not great at communicating relevant instructional information to me and it’s still miserable for my kids. They act surprised that my kids have a hard time focusing, but every square inch of wall and desk is covered with stuff and even I find it visually overwhelming! Lol. (Maybe that’s part of the plan! Who knows?!) ? I’m feeling more encouraged this morning. It’s not actually ruining our lives, and we’re about a quarter or a third of the way through what our insurance will cover anyway. So for better or for worse, the end is at least in sight! After the next progress report, I might consider switching to biweekly appointments and cutting down our vision practice at home. I realize that will slow our progress, but I don’t know that I want to continue to sacrifice everything for it. And I think it’s very possible that dd7 would perhaps get more out of the vision exercises if she were slightly older and more mature. I’m not sure and much may depend on how much progress has actually been made. Eighth now, the main progress I can gauge is how much they complain about u or do it incorrectly. ?

The place my kids really liked is also the best place around and so has no reason to work with us to get the price down. They have a waitlist six to nine months long of people willing to pay full price. They were very nice about it, but they are unwilling to compromise. It is a weekly commitment of a specific day and time - no rescheduling for being sick and you still pay if you miss. They are just that packed full and in demand. Hence our hour long drive for a place that is more flexible and affordable, even if not nearly as desirable.

Yikes. This sounds awful!! I'm sorry. ? I've considered switching to a VT they like more, but it hasn't YET been bad enough to want to eat that $10K bill for going out of network.

Ha ha. This made me laugh. Thank you. ?

I never even thought to give ibuprofen before hand. I’ll try that. It’s this vt or nothing (there’s no way we can afford the $10k out of pocket to go with someone not covered by insurance, and most aren’t). I will recheck their reflexes. That’s a good idea. I feel like I’m neglecting their education and a bad mom but I also KNOW there’s no way we can do actual academics during this season. You’re right that I probably need more breaks. I don’t think I take any right now except staying up after kids go to bed, but that’s not ideal from a sleeping perspective... lol. just last week we got a membership to a fun kids space museum near the therapy place that we intend to visit on a regular basis. thanks for the encouragement and the “permission” to scrap everything else. We’ve been scrapping it (everything except instrument practice and then assuaging my conscience with lots of audiobooks), but I it’s hard to shake this guilty conscience. You're right. We can do this. But I do need to suck it up and find extra childcare so I can take a break sometimes, and really make peace somehow with not getting anything else done. We ARE making progress, it’s imporant to remind myself. ?

I don’t know why it’s so hard. We could do reflex work 2-3X a day without too much issue. Why is vision so much harder for my kids? Not to mention the four hours we spend actually in office and driving there (it’s over an hour away) each week. My kids just hate it and there are tears more often than not still, every single time we try to do the exercises at home. Twenty minutes of actual exercises take us anywhere from 30min to 2 hrs, depending on the day, and then we repeat this again later and every day. We’re two months in and I need a pep talk to help me not quit I think... My husband has even suggested we just quit because it’s such a battle. By the time we finish our morning exercises, I have no mental energy left, and it’s all I feel like I can do to recoup some before we do it all again in the afternoon. FWIW, they are making progress (the older one faster than the 7yo). I just feel like it’s not sustainable and I’m exhausted of the fight. They have a progress eval in another three appointments, and I’m trying to hold on! Somebody just tell me it won’t stay like this or suggest a way to make it more bearable please!

This is all helpful. Thank you. Theres no purpose, actually, except informational, I guess... He is just interested in taking is test. Lol. This information above it not getting accommodations later seems really odd to me but I guess makes sense if folks would just want to improve their scores by trying to get some sort of extra accommodations they didn’t actually need or game the system in some similar way...

Oh that’s wonderful news! Ok. ? that’s so much easier than I was anticipating. Thanks!!

So, to clarify: it is the psychologist diagnosing the ADHD who should suggest appropriate accommodations?

Oh that is all interesting. No, we are currently not doing outside classes through anyone, not even a co-op. So my main concern really is having things set up for the testing next year, as well as having any sort of trail that I will need for testing down the road or potential he having him in classes, even though that’s not currently on the table. I guess I just don’t want to find out in five years but I should have been doing something more all along and I never even thought of it! ?