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Bexter

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Everything posted by Bexter

  1. Thank you OhElizabeth you have been very helpful! ElizabethB, that looks great, at least while waiting to get LiPS :) A friend of mine told me about a center near me that does testing and therapy for all of the learning disabilities my ds might have. They even do LiPS there! I'm going to go that route and will post again after I have received test results. Thank you all so much, I feel so much better and more confident in my ability to help him and/or get the help he needs! :)
  2. We don't have a Scottish Rite near us, we're in Colorado. :( If I do LiPS can I teach it with just the teacher's manual? Will that program actually help in his case or is there a better program for blending sounds together? Ds can say or repeat individual sounds but has a hard time remembering a string of sounds (like in task c of the barton screening) and especially blending. The biggest trip up for him with task c was changing the color of the letter tiles for different sounds rather than being able to repeat them or count out the individual sounds. Not sure if that makes a difference at all for needing LiPS? Should I begin LiPs and/or an OG program now or wait a couple months since he'll be starting VT next week? I'm going to ask his therapist on Thursday but figure it doesn't hurt to get multiple opinions. :001_smile:
  3. He had a vision screening but will be doing a 60 min visual assessment this Thursday and will begin VT soon after. Our insurance won't pay for it but neither will the ps so that'll be out of pocket. Thankfully our insurance will pay for a neuropsych eval I just have to get a referral through our PCM. I just gave him the Barton Screening and here are the results: Task A: Counting words 2 wrong, max. 1 For the sentence "She is very good at counting words" he replaced "very" with "really" even after correction. "The wild animal was eating spaghetti" he pronounces spaghetti wrong even after correction (this I already knew from dinner time lol). He counted 2 tiles for spaghetti (syllables), even after correction. Task B: Clapping Syllables 1 wrong, max 1. He clapped twice for "bath" Task C: Compare 3 Sounds w/ Colored Squares 4 correct after repeat, max 6. 4 wrong, max 2. I thought he would get all of Task A wrong. Task B and C were as expected. Apparently he needs LIPS. :/ This morning I talked a little more with the lady at our charter school and they simply can't help, even though they do want to, and she really recommends putting him in a full time public school. I told her I'm weighing my options and will talk it over with my husband. I'm really wanting to make this work and continue to homeschool. She said if he doesn't improve in reading and writing might not be able to attend the charter in the fall because it would be hard for him to keep up. Discouraging conversation. :( What can a ps do for us that I can't do? A break for me, sort of... I'd still have to drag him out the door every morning. I'd have to help him with homework for hours every evening. I'd still worry a ton about him and if he makes no progress there I'll be mad about more wasted time and I'll just pull him out again. Pulling him in and out of school is counterproductive. Plus, I don't know that it'll save enough money for it to be worth it. They won't pay for vision therapy which is the biggest expense and the entire Barton program is $1300, which is a lot but doable for us. I was homeschooled along with my 3 dyslexic brothers so I called my mom last night (why didn't I think of that first? lol). She put my oldest brother back in school and he didn't do well there AT ALL. He had so much regression she pulled him out again and never looked back. He's a firefighter and paramedic now so I think he turned out pretty good. :)
  4. This is a very good point, thank you! :001_smile:
  5. I really appreciate all of your responses. I realized later that I didn't even list all of his struggles...he was tested for hearing and speech 2 years ago. I was told he is slightly hard of hearing but not enough for a hearing aid or whatever other interventions are done for that. He was right on the edge of needing speech therapy but the therapist told me to just work with him on my own (correcting things he says). When he was a toddler I sometimes wondered if he was on the autism spectrum because of delayed speech and odd, obsessive behavior with toys (stacking, sorting, getting upset if something was missing). He has a very hard time concentrating when someone is doing something noisy while he is doing school, like if his sister plays the piano. He will get so angry he'll rip his paper or break a pencil and then cry. I was hopeful when I began looking at Barton because of the praise on this site about it but the FAQ comes across as stuck up and kind of turned me away from it. I also looked into AAR and, between the 2 programs, I feel like it might be a better fit for me and my son. Nonsense words in kindergarten started him down the path of disliking reading and is something that confused him a lot. I understand the point behind it, getting kids to read phonetically rather than memorizing or guessing, but it doesn't make sense since so many English words are not phonetic and my son ends up guessing either way. Plus putting in the effort to read words that mean nothing makes him feel like it was a total waste (I do too). Bob books work because they are short, simple stories and he feels a sense of accomplishment. I read the sample lessons for Barton and AAR and I knew right away that Barton won't be a good fit, he will be so lost. I think the letter tiles in both programs would work for him though. ;) What is LIPS, SLD and CTOPP? I looked up neuropsychological evaluations and it just came up with a bunch of places that deal with seizures and brain tumors, is that right? :confused1: I plan to call our insurance tomorrow to ask if they cover any of this. I contacted the principal at our homeschool charter that my kids attend 1 day a week and she said she wouldn't normally recommend this but in our situation she thinks having my son enrolled in public school for a year would be best since they have the resources to help him and our charter school doesn't. I'm not sure how I feel about that... Would 1 year really make a positive difference or would he do worse? The public school doesn't do vision therapy so that would come out of pocket anyway. If he's in school he'll be pulled out of class for remedial help and miss out on other things and it won't help his self-esteem either. The class sizes are huge, 30+ kids. Having a break from teaching him might be a relief and will free up time for my other 3 kids. I feel like public school for my older 2 was a waste of time and I should have homeschooled from the beginning. Not sure if that would have made a difference if he really has learning disabilities though. I wonder if doing vision therapy and AAR would be enough for him or if it'll be more wasted time and money? I also feel like a failure, that I can't teach my kid. So many thoughts...thanks for letting me vent.
  6. My son turned 8 in October and is seriously struggling with reading and writing which is not only effecting his language arts studies but hindering him from working independently in his other subjects and even hurting his self esteem. :sad: He went to public school for kindergarten and learned absolutely nothing so I pulled him out for his 1st grade year and now we’re 1/2 way through our 2nd year of homeschooling. I’ve been letting him learn at his own pace but not unschooling. We’re on lesson 83 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and we began that at the beginning of 1st grade…taking much longer than I anticipated because we repeat lessons for days/weeks before moving forward. I supplement with Bob Books as well as K and 1st grade sight word flash cards and books like Dr. Seuss. He reads every school day for about 30 minutes to an hour. He’s doing Handwriting Without Tears 1st grade and does well with that until it’s time for him to write on his own. He slowly does copywork (he is getting faster, instead of taking 1 hour for 1 sentence it now takes 10-15 minutes…). Creative writing is on the back burner for now, any time I’ve tried he gives up and just draws on his paper. He’s a very good artist though… :) Here's a list of what he struggles with: - sounds out individual letters in most words rather than blending, when he gets to the end of a long word he doesn’t know what he sounded out and guesses - confuses letter names and sounds - reverses some letters and sounds: 13 becomes 31, reverses B, D, J, Z - can’t remember correct alphabet order - when asked to write ABCs in capitals and lowercase there are a few he can’t remember: J, T, U, V, W, j, t, u, y - can’t remember a word that was read on the previous line or the next page, has to sound it out each time - no interest in reading - can’t remember simple sight words such as ‘and, see, the, can and this’ - reverses words: no becomes on, top becomes pot - has a hard time staying on task, I have to sit right next to him or he daydreams/doodles/walks away He does well with CTC Math (online) except for word problems. He loves art and science and is good at those subjects. He can beat video games and assemble challenging Lego sets quickly. He’s a really smart kid I just know he has some sort of learning disability and I’m not even sure where to take him to be evaluated. I'm guessing ADD/ADHD or dyslexia? He just did a vision screening and I found out he has severe tracking and convergence issues so we will be putting him in Vision Therapy at the beginning of next month but I’m not sure if that is the only issue we are facing? Any suggestions of what evaluations we should get or maybe even curriculum to switch to would be MUCH appreciated. My goal is to have him reading and writing at 2nd grade level by the end of summer and I really hope that isn’t unrealistic expectations.
  7. Thank you so much for this post, it really helped me decide between the 2. I just bought R&S for next school year and think it will be a good fit for us. :)
  8. Bummer! I didn't realize all that was needed to qualify for independent status. I guess people should just join the military or get married young! lol jk But in our case we did both... ;)
  9. By claiming your college age children as dependents on your taxes you are keeping them from qualifying from the financial aid they need and your EFC is higher. If they file independently and don't earn very much (or any) income then they will have a very low EFC and be able to get grants and loans. My own parents didn't realize this and ended up with an EFC far more than my education cost! As a result I didn't get any financial aid and they ended up paying for everything. When my husband and I got married our EFC was $0 so we both got enough money in grants to pay for our education.
  10. Good deal! I just registered for "This Isn't as Easy as I Thought" and can't wait!
  11. 4blessingmom, that's a good point about combining and simplifying. I am a little worried about being overwhelmed with all of my curriculum choices but I since I already bought almost all of it I really don't want (and can't afford) to change it all. HWOT and MCP phonics can be done independently other than a few questions here and there. I'm hoping WWE can be done independently by my older dd at least, other than the dictation. They'll both do grade 2 spelling and since neither of them have done grammar I think I'll combine FLL as well. SOTW is combined and math is CTCmath which is almost completely independent (yay!). Science and art are also combined. The focus for the summer is getting them solid in reading and we'll go from there.
  12. I'm glad you said this. I wanted to do that but wasn't sure if it would be a good idea.
  13. I've been searching these forums for about a month and finding some great suggestions and advice, so thank you! :) I decided to sign up and post because I need specific advice that I couldn't find through searching and am hoping someone can help me out. I'm really struggling with choosing a spelling curriculum! lol Probably shouldn't stress it as much as I am... Some background: I have 4 kids. This fall my oldest girl will be in 3rd grade, oldest boy in 2nd, younger girl will be 4 (beginning casual pre-k at home) and youngest boy will be 2. The oldest went to public K and 1st grade, reads fairly well (struggles with "big" words), has poor reading comprehension and is mostly a natural speller although I haven't had her writing much this year other than in MCP Phonics. She loves copywork and does it in her free time. My oldest boy went to public K and learned almost nothing. This year at home he's learned to read! :) We're doing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and I LOVE it! He's on lesson 60 (because we don't move forward until he is doing well) and he's still sounding out almost every word so I'm trying to use Bob books to teach him sight words but hey, at the beginning of the year he couldn't even tell me what the letters were or what sound they make so I'm counting it as a win. ;) He's been doing HWOT and I've seen a huge improvement in his handwriting with that. He's able to write a few 2-3 letter words on his own. He doesn't like to read but enjoys HWOT. Neither of my kids have done any grammar, I thought they weren't supposed to start that until 4th grade...oops! We'll be doing FLL 1 over the summer to catch up. For both kids I've been lazily doing spellingcity. It's ok for supplement but I feel like my kids need to be physically writing words on paper and they aren't learning spelling rules. I want something that goes well with the LA curriculum I've already chosen, doesn't have a million pieces to get lost (like AAS), is quick or can be done mostly independently, teaches spelling rules and can be used for both natural spellers and struggling spellers/readers. I don't like doing a lot of prep work or prior reading, I just want to open a book and go. Our LA curriculum for the fall will be HWOT cursive and print (ugly but it works!), MCP Phonics B & C, WWE 2 & 3, FLL 2 and maybe 3 (can't decide where to begin with oldest dd). I think I've narrowed it down to R&S Spelling or Spelling Workout but can't decide between the 2. I've also considered AAS (but it might drive me crazy for the same reason Right Start math did) and Sequential Spelling (doesn't teach rules??).
  14. Hi! I unschooled preschool with my older 2 and then decided to give public school a test run. I pulled them out after the 2013-14 school year (our states first year of Common Core...disaster!) so we've only been formally homeschooling for a year. I'm not entirely new to the homeschooling idea though, I was homeschooled in high school by choice. I had heard about the WTM book and learning style but never gave it much thought. About a month ago a friend of mine said she loved the WTM so I decided to give it another look. Now I'm hooked! I bought the book and began searching this forum and buying the curriculum that's been suggested here. Now I have questions (which I'll post elsewhere) but wanted to introduce myself first. :)
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