Today our family went to the eye doctor to evaluate my son's vision.
Sure enough my son has eye trouble. He is slightly nearsighted, but not enough to need glasses. However, there are three issues with his eyes that do require attention. The first is his eye tracking ability, eye tracking refers to the eye's ability to follow a moving object, and to move easily and smoothly from side to side, as is required to read a line of text. Children usually develop this ability on their own as they play, and by the time they try to learn to read, their eyes can move smoothly across a line of text, or follow a butterfly fluttering about the room. My son's eyes did not develop this ability. They move side to side in a halting, jerking, movement. They also move slightly up and down as they attempt to move side to side. The next issue is his convergence ability, that is the ability of both eyes to focus on the same spot in space. With concentrated focus and effort, he can make his eyes do this, but he has to work very hard to get them to, and it is not supposed to be hard. It is supposed to be automatic. The third problem with his eyes is that when he focuses on something near him, and then tries to focus further away, his eyes take too long to relax and refocus, this is probably the cause of his slight nearsightedness.
The good news is that all of these problems are treatable through vision therapy. It is possible that our medical insurance will cover it, we are still waiting to find that out.
The doctor suggested that we get him tested for Dyslexia as well, and, as I shared in an earlier post, we have already made an appointment for that. If he has Dyslexia, the vision therapy won't fix that, but by removing the visual obstacles, so that he only has the obstacle of Dyslexia still in his way, we will make learning much easier for him.
My daughter also has convergence insufficiency. Even though it's NOT dyslexia we have found over the last few months that she learns better if I treat it as dyslexia. We have been doing LOTS of multi-sensory reading activities.
ReplyDeleteWe are still trying to figure it all out. We realized in Nov she had it, but at that time our son was under going major surgery for ITW (idiopathic toe walking). Things since late Feb have settle down on our son's front, so I have been able to dive into our daughters reading skills. I'm still reading and learning. I found a site that sells books and resources for multi sensory reading, learning etc. http://orton-gillingham.com/frmShoppingCatalog.aspx
ReplyDeleteI haven't bought any of the materials but many of them can be found at my local library so I have been check them out and using them. I also was given "the phonics game" by some friends of ours. It's a series of card games. The rules to these games are on VHS and audio cassette, and a rule book. We watch the video and then play the games. I finally have see my daughter starting to make the connections between letters and letter sounds.
The game makes you match words based on like sounds you can take other people cards if they have the same like sound as the card you are working with and at the end the person with the most cards wins. I think having just the ONE word on the card and manipulating (playing with the cards) and sounding things out and hearing OTHERS sound things out as they play is helping. The card game is using sound, touch, and sight all at the same time.
I'm still learning and trying to find other multi-sensory games and activities, but for now that's all I got. The more I learn and understand about multi-sensory the better I'll be able to do it here at home.
You're welcome. I have been bless that many of the materials that is suggested in the catalog I mention earlier can be gotten via my local library. In addition one of things listed in the catalog I reference earlier is phonics bingo. (It's phonics quizmo on the game tab). I was able to download for FREE a phonics bingo game at currclick.com This is the direct link to the FREE phonics bingo game: http://www.currclick.com/product_info.php?products_id=16709&it=1
ReplyDeleteIt may not be the quizmo but it's bingo and I think bingo is bingo. Right?
Hello, I'm a mom on the HIK list. I live on Vashon on now but, stay on because we sometimes travel over that way. I post homemaking, homeschooling, and family pictures on my blog. Stop by when you have time. :)
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