she does love song. on Friday it was nice, finally, so we were outside and I was emptying out the sandbox that was flooded(the Wild Kratts were right, worms really dont drown). I was making up a silly song about getting the worms into my bucket...of course nothing "appropriate" rhymes with bucket so I switched to pail. she still had no idea of words to rhyme but it was fun. yesterday she actually asked for words that rhyme with something she would say. at least she's getting interested in it instead of not caring at all or shutting down because she doesn't know.

thank you both for your thoughtful replies. I knew somebody would have input :) her first eval was an informal one that the head SLP offered after I mentioned the rhyming thing on the section of paperwork asking about siblings and language problems. she now sees an SLP who's been more "formally" evaluating her at her sessions. I suppose I could have asked for a full-on one day sort of eval but I think we're doing well with this method just slower. I'll have to ask about TAPS. I have no idea what criteria or test they're using. I'm thinking of "enrolling" her for public kinder so she can get their baseline testing ("aims web testing") done this summer. she had a formal OT eval. for phonemic awareness, we'd been doing the normal read everyday thing and then as part of MP JK curriculum this year, letter sounds as part of their alphabet books. And that book touches on beginning and ending sounds. When we hit a road bock with beginning & ending sounds, I backed up and tried rhyming sounds and realized that she has no concept of it so I worked on my own with rhyming matching games, etc... no luck. So then I got earobics but it just doesn't seem to make sense to her. I got AAR-pre and we have gotten through to the end of the rhyming section and she's not much better than when we started :( for math, I just started MIF a week ago because the preschool R&S book (inside &outside) had gotten boring/annoying and not much about math at the end. she did fine with Counting with Numbers. I did use number cubes on my own to demonstrate numbers and she has the basic idea of figuring out how many more to get X number and adding in that if you have 3 and go 2 more , you have 5. I suppose it's a bit early to scrap a math plan but I didn't want to struggle through it if it was obviously a bad fit :) is 5 a bit young for a neuropsychologist eval? and, since you insisted...how can a kid have all that and not be dyslexic or spectrum?? I sooo want somebody else to figure this out for me. I almost wish we did have education coordinators in MI for homeschoolers. it's pretty hands-off here. I'm afraid to ask the schools for fear of proving that I can't do it :(

Background: so....My daughter will be 5 in August. We've been homeschooling this past year mostly as a test for myself since I've never done it before. Through this I've learned, at the least, that she is a visual learner (not sure if actually VPL...that seems to be a very specific and technical determination). She certainly has difficulty processing information auditorily so read-aloud story comprehension questions are a bit of a nightmare. Memorization/recitation is difficult and she needs visual (or song) cues to retrieve the information. Recently while getting her younger sister evaluated for speech (apraxic), my concerns with my older daughter came up: specifically no matter how much I've taught it, she can't 'get' rhymes, she mixes up the sounds in her words (gymnaskits, gis =disk, disketti - spaghetti, etc...). During her evaluation, the SLP also noticed that she is very concrete and immature in her thinking, very distractable, and struggles with the social pragmatics of language and behavior. She was repeating the questions before answering them, talking-talking about things not relevant, not looking at the SLP when talking to her. The SLP was seeing signs of Aspergers/HFA. And thinks mixing up the sounds in long words and being unable to sequence multi-syllable non-sense words may be residual apraxia. She also says she has slow processing, although I'm not sure if she means just slow auditory processing or 'regular' processing or if they're even different. The OT eval also showed slow processing, low tone and low threshhold for vestibular processing. Bizzarely, she used to be my 'calm' kid and now she's the one that's bouncing off walls and can't sit still through a meal to save her soul. We'd taken away the booster seat from the 2 year old because she was moving around so much that she was going to fall out. So the 2 year old, just had to kneel on her seat and that worked great. The older one can reach the table without kneeling but I'd let her do that if she'd just be in her chair. She's usually half off! silly thing. She's not big enough to reach sitting on a therapy ball or I'd try that ;) For her therapy, we are mostly working on processing and pragmatics and since we've started scripting for her better things to say or ways to act, her odd behaviors have gotten better. Her continual use of movie lines to tell about something has decreased now that I script a better thing to say that matches the situation. If nothing else, I'm much less frustrated by the continual repeating I need to do to get her to do things. I can accept that I need to tell her every morning to take the pull-up off and get panties on(still needs the pull-up at night). We have visual schedules up now and that helps with getting her to do what she needs to get done or to know what will be happening. While reading, _The Dyslexic Advantage_, I'm still seeing so many signs of the dyslexic in her to even include the pragmatic stuff. She is quite creative. I haven't yet found her particular dyslexic strengths. One example, I think of a lot is from her eval: She was asked to name some animal you'd find in a zoo. She responded with the names of the characters from Madagascar. The SLP saw this as concrete...she was asked for names and gave personal names and without any sort of information that would enable another person to know where she got her information (pragmatics). I wonder if this is more showing the creative type of connections that dyslexics make and she spit it out first because she didn't sort through the possible answers and give the one that would make more sense. She loves to sing and makes up songs all the time for what she's thinking. The SLP didn't know what to make of it when she started responding to her questions in song! Today I finally remembered to do the heavy work and vestibular type of OT before attempting school work and that worked much better. She loved her first day of wet-dry-try! I've decided to try out Math in Focus (singapore) because it's supposed to be so visual. It's only been a few days but I notice that she's way more interested in playing with the manipulatives that the math involved. The stuff in the book is material she's comfortable with because it starts at the beginning and she can count reliably up to 12, usually to 20 and can say up to 100. I've read that sometimes VPL kids can get get too distracted with the visual hands-on manipulatives and might be better off without. Since another part of dyslexia is a challenge with rote memory of data, I wonder if that is what people mean by 'needing' a spiral approach. That is not the type I'm interested in but, whatever works, I guess! So....my question: Would I be better off doing Rod & Staff or MCP for less manipulatives (or even Saxon/? for spiral) with her? She seems to have a pretty good grasp of math for the bit we've done. If anything she just struggles with the fine motor skills to write well but that's a time, strength & OT thing. Or would the why that's built into the singapore approach shore up the problems that rote memorization cause? My other question: should I just try to teach her to read so she could see what I'm trying to explain about the rhyming sounds being at the end of the word? I've specifically not worked on 'reading' since she's young and since she doesn't have the phonemic awareness that everyone says is crucial. Lastly: Can dyslexia cover her behaviors or does it really sound like HFA/ASD? Is there an outline version of The Dyslexic Advantage book? added info: I've tried Earobics but even after the first couple lessons, it seems to be 'beyond' her. I suppose I should keep working it but it just frustrates her and I don't want her shutting down (which she tends to do if something seems hard, she needs lots of positive reinforcement to get her past the "I don't know" answer for everything. I have to find _something_ she got right and celebrate the heck out of it! :) ok, so that was _REALLY_ long and probably confusing. I appreciate any thoughts on the matter and help sorting through it. :)

i agree. my plan is for it to be fun. I'm just so new I can't figure out how to make a unit study (and can admit I'm add enough to not follow through figuring it out.) i do much better with explicit directions of "read this, color this, watch this, plant this " :)

:( that's what I was afraid of. thanks for that list you made though! it looks awesome. I have a similar problem with the What your.... books. the information might be there but just not in a format I want to read to a 5 year old. so what have you moved to instead of intellego?

I'm contemplating between intellego and MBTP for a kindergartener next year. I like the topics covered by intellego but don't like only reading off my iPad. I love the idea of MBTP but it may be to much. (I have phonics and math well covered). I'm hoping someone who's actually used intellego has already figured out good picture books and/or read alouds to complement it?

I'm excited that you're working on a K program. Can't wait to see it :) are you able to tell us a preview or overview of what it'll focus on? thank you so much!

is it possible to do calvert without their phonics? can you get only some of their curriculum? I've been looking at it a lot but din't want to spend $1000 and then not use half of it :(

thanks. after talking with the HWT lady and getting some understanding about the 2 line writing, I ordered some of the k level stuff. we may not go through the whole program but it looks good to work on fine motor control. thanks for the input!

thanks for the ideas. :) I'll have a chance to look at MFW at a conference next month. hopefully I'll see oak meadow too. I'd dismissed that one because it seems all the stories are included in their book instead of outside story books. I'm really looking for something that's coordinated so the projects are about learning and not just only a random craft that resembles the story. she's a bright child and creative but just doesn't get information in from hearing it or without a visual reference. for example, a few weeks ago i got some 100 number puzzles to show her the idea of repeating nature of numbers. I had no plan or expectation that she would count to 100. At the time it was a bit frustrating continual scripting on my part about finding the first number on the piece and then finding its spot in on the puzzle. (I know I need to script and be explicit with her and my frustration level has gone down so much after realizing this.) anyway, 2 days ago while watching a show I realized that she was whispering numbers. as I listened she counted to 100 on her own and was very proud of herself! :) she also loves to make up songs and remembers things well from them. I've thought of FIAR too but I'm hoping for incrementally tied together so there's a flow to the info. (like, do this book book, then this one, etc..) I'd love to do simple Americana & holidays. I like the progression/topics of intellego but really dislike digital books for teaching and would rather a list of picture books about the topics than info in a document.

my daughter (4.5) insists on putting a period in the after the first 2 letts of her name....? weird. I tell her that for "school" she needs to practice the way other people can read it but she can write whatever she wants when she's playing. *shrug* (a cheaper app to look at that also does lower case is the fundanoodle app. )

AAR is all about reading. it's made by the same people who make all about spelling and is a scripted package for teaching reading using a version of orton-gillingham methods. this is a method recommended for dyslexics but is a good, incremental method of teaching reading. you can check out more of their program at http://www.allaboutlearningpress.com/all-about-reading/?fullSite=1 AAR-pre would do a great job of letter ID and pre reading skills needed for kindergarten. another thought would be the HWT getting ready for school stuff. I don't know about their pre-reading skills but its definitely about letter recognition. we've done some of the R&S with my daughter but have gotten pretty burned out just doing the counting with numbers and then inside & outside that were included in my MP junior K package. of the two I liked counting with numbers the best. I added manipulatives to work on counting but she got the gist of counting to 12 with it. I&O does so much nature stuff in the middle of numbers that's its gotten annoying. I've recently had oak meadow and my fathers world recommended to me as gentle kindergarten material. have you looked at those? at least MFW also has preschool and prek to choose too if the k looks too hard. http://www.mfwbooks.com/products/M50/10/10/0/1 maybe do the 3/4 package for the read alouds from sonlight instead of 4/5? another thought, have you looked at the developing early learner books or mathematical reasoning at timberdoodle? I haven't used them but am heavily considering at the least the early learner books.

i second AAR-pre. We started this about a week ago with my 4.5 year old daughter. Even though she knows her letters (upper and lower case), she's enjoying this program. My tag along 2.5 year old is picking up her letters quite nicely too (she really just listens in and get to color her page). Besides just letter identification, it works on phonemic awareness starting with rhyming and gets to word counts, syllable counts, etc...and letter sounds. I haven't used sonlight, but am considering using the 4/5 with my kindergartner next year (for the literature basically). what part do you think isn't meaty enough? that could help you decide what to look at instead.

I am nearly scrapping all my plans for kindergarten for my daughter (5 this august). We're getting a handle on issues like slow processing, difficulty with auditory processing, possibly dyslexia (lots of the pre-reading signs), maybe aspergers/social-language pragmatics, etc.... She needs direction and scheduling. She needs hands-on, and visual learning. We recently started AAR-pre and she _loves_ Ziggy and its good practice for scripting and interaction. So....I'm planning to continue with AAR-1 when we get there. I've got MIF-K for math. We're starting HWT to work on fine motor control and letter orientation and I plan to continue with it until we've got a good handle on it and can move into writing/copywork maybe late K or 1st or later as needed. Since we've got plenty of hard work to do, so I'm looking for something that is fun (activities, projects, etc) and put together for kindergarten. I'd prefer more secular than heavily religious. I'm thinking about MBTP (5-7), Sonlight (4-5? or 5?), the reading list and enrichment guide from MP, Timberdoodle kindergarten, Intellego package, ....????? other ideas? thoughts on the above? other companies that I don't know about? comparisons on the reading lists of the above? --I understand that many people don't do a packaged or actual 'curriculum' for Kindergarten but it's something that I need to keep us all on track and ensuring that she gets something fun and coordinated to balance the work we need to do for the other areas. I'm new to homeschooling, let alone special needs, so I need lots of hand-holding Even if the package isn't the greatest education in the world, it's only Kindergarten and I want it to be fun for her. She gets and will continue to get plenty of free play time. ETA: added intellego to the list

My older daughter (nearly 5) has been having difficulty with controlling how she writes. I'm strongly suspecting dyslexia and we are currently working with ST/OT for possible spectrum issues, specifically speech pragmatics and processing, low tone and some vestibular/arousal threshold sensory issues. I'm not sure yet if the "processing" is only auditory processing (certainly a challenge for her) or slow processing in general. anyway, I am interested in trying a OT designed sort of program to help her fine motor control/writing. She can hold the pencil and can write her name but can't manage to make or trace letters and have them stay where they need to go (as she says "that one got wiggly!") or they'll start in odd places or go the wrong way around. The end shape is more or less correct but she went right instead of left to get there (if that makes any sort of sense! ). I notice that when she tries to do mazes she doesn't seem to get trying to stay between the lines. (do they make mazes like bumper bowling with raised edges?). She likes to draw pictures of people and has just recently started to be willing to color pages sometimes. I like HWT in that the small chalkboard is designed for the kids to use the edges to get their lines right. I don't like how odd the letters end up looking and I've hear negative results from their special 2-lined paper. I don't want to have to reteach her to write to fix the oddities of this program. I've recently seen the Fundanoodle program online and am intrigued. It was also designed by an OT but the letters look more 'reasonably' designed. My concern is that I think the dry erase board (instead of chalkboard) is bigger than the written letter because it seems to be the place to primarily work with the magnetic letter parts. I may be not understanding and maybe they do have the kids use this board exactly like the chalkboard in HWT. I've only been able to see little bits on line. I'm considering combining them and tacking the little chalkboard and little chalks onto the fundanoodle program but I'm not sure if that's redundant or would be just confusing. Does anyone have any thoughts on either of these programs? (I know comparing kids isn't helpful but I hadn't realized how much she was struggling until I noticed that my 2.5 year old was able to trace letters in a little workbook she was playing with nearly perfectly the other day. Admittedly she has phenomenal fine motor skills but severe speech issues...but that's a whole different topic :),)

would it work to let her use it as an outline for study or jumping off point to research those topics in depth from other sources and then write up essays, timelines, give presentations, etc... from them? that could encourage her initiative in suggesting a method but satisfy the need for more rigor.

..slightly off topic, but.... by Nancy Larson science books do you mean these : http://www.nancylarson.com/index_hs2.html they don't seem like "books" to me so I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the wrong thing. the program is certainly pricey! :) but gets good reviews.

have you looked at fundanoodle? it's been intriguing me lately. in some ways it's like HWT but the letters don't seem as oddly shaped. they have pre-writing stuff and early writing stuff too.

I'm glad you have some good resources for diet and I hope that SLP will work out for you. Good luck!

I just recently started my daughter (4.5 yrs) on AAR -pre after mostly finishing MP junior K (which overall I like for a packaged option). she honestly knows her letters but has a really hard time with phonemic awareness. also, she may be aspergers too (some signs but not diagnosable yet per recent eval). she adores the silly zebra! and will happily do her other work if Ziggy teaches it or at least visits with her while she does it. we're still going to finish up our MP work too. re bible based, the biblish parts of MP can be taken out pretty easily. even the rod and staff books used for the math in the package are mostly numbers and nature. the bible pages can easily be skipped. I've really liked looking at the hands on things from timberdoodle too. I don't think I'd buy a whole grade level package but great stuff! really good options here for fine motor skills. If she needs help with gross motor skills, I assume her evaluator or OT/PT would be helpful for direction. I also recently purchased family time fitness to help me get more purposeful in this area (she gets OT for sensory integration and low tone). it may be a good option for her depending on what she needs and how comfortable you are getting things done. many people consider the Singapore essentials or early bird books (at least book A) to be pre-k level so that could be a good option. I'm getting ready to start math in focus K which seems to be a little stronger than essentials or early bird (at least their A books) but it is more expensive. I like the hands on and visual nature since my daughter has a hard time with auditory processing (and slow processing in general) . especially with a language problem , make sure to read, a lot! she may not be able to take a lot at a time but just spread it out. I like the sonlight packages for their reading. maybe even the 3/4 package would be good with the nursery rhymes and fairy tales. I'm not with it enough to have done the FIAR stuff but they are at least good reading lists. if she needs help with handwriting, besides just improving fine motor skills with beading, play dough, chalk, etc, you could check out handwriting without tears (HWT) or fundanoodle (option I'm seriously considering). I've also liked the MP alphabet books for tracing/practicing letter formation once she was willing and able to use a pencil. hope something in here is helpful. the eval should be very helpful in picking things out to use her strengths and support her needs.

Being able to say yes and no are great! It took us forever to get her to say no....It felt sooooo odd to work so hard to teach my kid to say no! lol One thing to remember is that if it is apraxia, it's not a speech delay, it's a speech disorder. No amount of growing will fix it. Only proper therapy. In a delay, their speech develops in the same method as other kids just at a later time table (ie able to say dada/mama first then work up to things like ball, cup, then harder words etc). With a speech disorder, besides the onset of speech being 'delayed', the order they learn to speak is 'out of order'...for example, my daughter's first word approximation was 'guck' for stuck (wanted out of her car seat on a long drive!)...but couldn't say dada til she was over 2 years old and couldn't get "daddy" until just a month ago (although she had done it for about a week when she first started saying 'dada' but then lost it). I don't think that not making noise when she's trying to make a word would be a speech delay type of thing. I don't know how your particular ECI (I'm guessing that's the same as my Early On) works, but you should be able to request an updated eval if you don't have one coming up. If you don't think she's making progress, it's a good reason to re-evaluate and change goals or methods. Ours was automatically done at 6 mo into the program which happened to be at 2 years. In my case, the SLP wanted to do the special ed eval because she didn't feel that my dd was making enough progress. This eval qualified her for special ed and moved us from 2x's/mo to 1 hr/wk with the SLP and an extra 3hrs/mo with the special ed teacher who comes in to work on speech stuff, OT stuff, development stuff, etc.... Also, at least here, the EI ST is just done differently than private. EI is more play based and meeting the kids where they are. Private will be more intense. At very young ages, too intense may not be a good thing anyway. Little ones often don't respond well to 'work' but eliciting speech and imitation of sound effects and exclamations all work up to trying to use speech. Everything I've read agrees that Apraxic kids need frequent, one-on-one therapy sessions to see benefits. So it'd be great to get them to up their frequency. Comparing to her friends is a good way for you to do a little sanity check that there really is something there, but try not to get too hung up on it. Every kid is different anyway and especially with speech delays/disorders. A friend of ours who's only a couple months older than mine could say "aurora borealis" (seriously!!) and mine still couldn't say 'mama'. It was pretty disheartening but good motivation to fight for what she needed.

My daughter (2 1/2 now) is also apraxic and was just formally diagnosed about a month ago. We initially just did therapy through the school system early on program. Since she's close to aging out and the 'in school' program is drastically less services, I pursued private testing/therapy. We're still using the school system and kind of meshing it with the private therapy. There's a lot of scary info about Apraxia but early treatment can and will make a huge difference! I would check out www.apraxia-kids.org to start. As with most things there are levels of severity with Apraxia (also called Childhood Apraxia of Speech or Developmental Apraxia). Standard ST(speech therapy) is not considered to be particularly helpful for Apraxic kids. The two types I have learned about that are recommended are PROMPT (I'm sure OhElizabeth can detail this more) and Kaufman. I suggest learning about them and getting the best treatment you can afford and physically reach. At 2, most places won't officially diagnosis but you can be working with that assumption (so it would be "suspected CAS"). I don't have PROMPT available to me but have been happy with our progress using Kaufman methods (her school SLP who suspected CAS initially used Kaufman type methods and we go to the Kaufman clinic now). My daughter is doing so much better now than when we started Early On speech services at 18 mo. At 2 years she only had maybe 10 approximations (close to words but not actual words like 'ba' for ball) so she qualified for Special Ed (lot more speech services). Developmental sites will say that 50 words are ok at 2 but, honestly, a typically developing kid would have around 200 so don't let them push you off. On a positive note, you're daughter is verbalizing at all which is great for an apraxic kid. Some don't at all and it's very difficult to correct or assess speech when they're not making any noise! :) The signing will help keep her frustration down about communicating while you work on speech and clarity. And the movement of the hands can help to 'trigger' or cue the movement of her mouth for speech. (not that the signing directs the mouth but if you get the body moving, the speech muscles can get brought along for the ride ;) . An interesting thing to notice is after you get a kid bouncing or running, you can get them to repeat "go!" or "woooo!" or whatever even though they normally can't . For us, just getting her to try to imitate anything was a struggle and she could say fairly complicated animal noises but not the words, like 'meow' but not cat. Once we got past the imitation barrier, things got much easier! I think that was a bit rambly but I hope there's something helpful for you. :)

I have AAR-pre that bought a couple months ago and under the above paragraph it says: "Permission not granted for co-op, classroom, school-wide, or system-wide reproduction of materials. Permission is granted to the individual purchaser to photocopy the student materials in this book for non-commercial individual (household) use only." I take this to mean I can I can make copies of the activity pages for us to use.

you can check out the site http://www.dys-add.com/ even if you don't use her methods, Susan Barton does a great job of explaining things. and responds quickly and with detailed answers to questions you may have. also try _the dyslexic advantage_ for help learning how your dc fits (or doesn't) with dyslexia. the book describes the positives and negatives of dyslexic processing and can help to match your dc's strengths with the programs you choose.

i think that since it is designed to be able to work for kids who are having trouble (dyslexic especially) it will move more slowly/incrementally than others. I agree with PP, move quickly when you can, slow down when you need to.