Getting Going Again and a Product Recommendation

Well, we hadn't planned on taking a very long holiday break from homeschooling, we were only going to take about three days off, but over the holidays we had a lot of other things going on, such as a death in the family, so we ended up stopping for over two weeks after all.

Yesterday we started up again, its hard to get going after a break, especially since I work and have to do a lot of the homeschooling after I get home.  The kids are more reluctant to do homeschool at night, and I'm tired as well.  But we got it done yesterday anyway.

I took this photo yesterday for my Project 365 blog, you can see that its already dark outside that window.  In this picture we are doing Saxon Phonics.  My son struggles a lot with reading, and we used this program for first grade, he did really well with it, but it was really time consuming so we switched  to another program, then another, then another... and he grew more confused with each one rather than advancing he was regressing.  He went from being able to read multisyllabic words to struggling with words like "dog".   We suspect he might be dyslexic, but we aren't sure.  At any rate we are finally back to what works best for him, Saxon Phonics, and I am seeing some improvement.  Its funny, but it isn't that time consuming anymore.  I think it was only so time consuming in first grade because of my son's age and personality.  He likes to stop and talk about everything as he does it, and it slows him down.  Now that he's older though, he is learning the art of staying on task a little better.

I really like the review included with Saxon Phonics, we are doing the second grade level right now, and I didn't have to worry at all about the fact that it had been three years since my son had done grade one Saxon.  Grade two Saxon reviews EVERYTHING that was in grade one, plus adds new information.  Also, everything the kids learn is reviewed every day.  First there are the "Letter Cards", which have letters, or phonetic groupings of letters on each card, each time we learn a new letter or group, it is added to the deck, and the kids have to say the name of the letter or group when they see it.  For example when I show the card that has "ch" on it, they say, "digraph c-h".  Then there is the picture card deck, each card has a picture of the keyword that we use to help us remember the phonetic sound, along with the letters and phonetic coding.  For example, the digraph ch has three picture cards, one has a picture of cheese, one has a picture of a chef, and one has a picture of musical notation for a chord.  The child sees the cards and says the appropriate word based on the picture, followed by the sound the letter or group makes in that word, for example "Cheese /ch/".   Another deck is the spelling sound deck, which the kids don't actually look at, the teacher does.  The teacher looks at the card and makes the sound, then the child echos the sound and writes the letters used to make that sound.  There are also sight word cards, and once a sight word is introduced it is reviewed every day, in fact everything is reviewed every day, and phonics sounds are reviewed both by sight with the picture cards, orally when the kid echos and tells you what they will write, and then kinesthetically when the child writes the letters for the sounds.  There are other review decks also, but the ones I think are most helpful are the ones I described.  Here is a picture of some of them:

So you might be wondering how my son is doing now that we've started this.  Well, he still struggles with reading, but much less than before!   He is doing much better, and I expect that he'll continue to improve.

I know there is a point in the curriculum where you start "retiring" cards that the student has mastered, but even after retiring them you still review them once a week.  The kids also practice their skills on worksheets, and by reading little books, along with whatever supplemental reading you wish to assign.  The program comes with various literature suggestions, but this is the one part I can't really claim to like.  The suggested literature is not really the sort of reading my family does.  There are references to the occult and other things my family does not like, so we look for our own supplemental reading, often Bible stories or character building stories.

My only regret is that I ever stopped using this program in the first place.  I had prayed for God to lead me in picking out the right program, and he did, then I decided to use something else, how foolish of me!  My son should be in fourth grade, but because his reading is so delayed the only subject he performs on grade level with is math.  So we are calling him a third grader.  He doesn't know the difference, he thinks he is "supposed to be" a third grader, so it doesn't upset him at all, he just thinks he is extra good at math!

Eventually we might decide to let him "skip a grade" and get back where he would have been, but that will depend on his skill level, he needs to work at the level he is able to learn at.  I think once he finishes this second grade phonics, he will advance fairly quickly, because its only his reading skills that are holding him back.

So I guess I am recommending Saxon Phonics to anyone who has a child who struggles to read and doesn't do well with other programs, any child who thrives on constant (literally redundant) review of concepts, and who needs to have everything directly taught, rather than being able to infer or gather information about reading by intuition.  I have not been paid, hired, or commissioned by Saxon or by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  I am not doing this for any other reason than that I am a a satisfied user of this product.

My son is doing so much better, how could I not be satisfied with this product!