So Much Conflicting Information!

I have written before about my son who is (most likely) Dyslexic, I say most likely because he has all the symptoms on the list, he has developed the strategies that dyslexics usually develop to try to cope with or hide their disability, and I've had a reading specialist tell me that they are about 99% sure he has dyslexia, but he hasn't been formally tested yet, so there is still a very small chance that it is something else.  The only people who can actually give a formal diagnosis are developmental psychologists, and as of yet we haven't seen one.  We will be seeing one soon, I plan to call for an appointment this month, but in the mean time I have been doing a lot of my own research.

What I have found is that "experts" don't even agree exactly what dyslexia is, let alone how to treat it, however most  of the experts agree that there is more than one type of dyslexia, for some children it is primarily a distortion of letters on the page, something in the visual processing area of their brain mixes things up, and they don't really "see" the print correctly, for others it primarily an auditory processing problem, the brain must use its auditory center along with its visual center in order to sound out words, and for some children this is more difficult than for others, so it takes them much longer to recall the sounds of the phonemes they see on the page, even if they do see them correctly.  For other children it is a basic language difficulty, these children typically had trouble learning to speak, and seem to have difficulty with language in general, including written language.  Then from those three basic types of dyslexia, children can suffer from widely varying degrees of difficulty, a few have such severe problems they never become functionally literate, but most can obtain literacy eventually.  Not only are there widely varying degrees of the disability, and at least three separate processing problems that can cause it, but it seems that many children have a combination of two or more of these types of dyslexia. Some of the children also have a lot of problems with memorization in any subject, which effects their ability to learn sight words and phonemes.

All of that makes me understand why the approaches used to teach dyslexics often differ from child to child.  Depending on the exact mix of processing problems, some dyslexic children will do best with intensive phonics, some need to get a large number of sight words under their belt, some need to improve their eye tracking ability, some need to work on general language skills by being read to and answering questions, engaging in conversation, writing and dictation, and other activities like that.  Some children need to learn to use their hands on the page to help their eyes and brain determine directionality of the print. 

While I am not an expert special education teacher, I do know my son.  I know that his problems seem to touch all of those areas to a degree.  He struggles some with distortions on the page and with eye tracking, but is usually able to overcome those problems just by keeping a finger on the page.  He did have a language delay, and needed two years of speech and occupational therapy before he was speaking on an age appropriate level.  The auditory processing seems a little slow, but not too severe, and he has really improved his phonemic awareness since we started intensive phonics instruction.  Rote memorization takes him more time than it does most kids, which is why the phonics program we use is so good, it reviews everything daily, so he gets the practice he needs in order to memorize what sound each phoneme makes, and which sight word is which.

In both my research, and in speaking with other mothers with dyslexic children, I have found that there is a lot of disagreement.  Some people insist that phonics is the ONLY approach that works, while others insist that dyslexic children can NOT learn phonics an must memorize sight words to the exclusion of phonics.  Others insist that you must use a combination of approaches.  My intuition and my experience with my son tells me that the last group of people are the ones who correct, at least in regards to my own son's reading difficulties.  My son needs the phonics instruction in order to be able to figure out new words, but he also needs to see those words repeatedly, over and over again, until he begins to recognize them by sight.  Even with words that are phonetically regular, he needs to have enough repetition so that he does not have to continue sounding them out every time he encounters them.  The intensive phonics we have been using has greatly increased his accuracy and decoding skills, but has done little to improve his fluency.  He still sounds out almost every single word letter by letter.  So I know that we need to also start using repetitive books to help him start to recognize common words without sounding them out letter by letter.

I have some repetitive books, and I am also going to start working with him on learning Dr. Fry's 3000 instant words.  This is a word list compiled of the most common English words used in print, the 220 dolch sight words are part of the list, and those words alone make up about 50% of written text that children encounter,  these words, along with the rest of the 3000 instant words make up about 90% of written text that any English speaking person will encounter.

So my son is going to continue learning his phonics, he is also going to start practicing his reading with some repetitive books, he is going to do some reader's theater to practice reading with expression, and we are going to start adding the words from Dr. Fry's list to my son's weekly spelling list, and also start practice reading those words off a list or from flash cards each day.  

For the 3000 instant words, we will be using THIS BOOK. As you can see, we don't try to get the 3000 words memorized in one year, instead we have weekly lists, which the child can learn to spell, and can also practice reading.  Any that give my son difficulty after a week's time will be carried over into the next week until he masters them.  However, I won't teach the phonetically regular ones as pure sight words, I will introduce them first while pointing out the phonetic elements and helping my son to sound them out, but thereafter will have him practice them until he recognizes them quickly, by sight.

Wow! What a Day!

Today we went to co-op.  That means that we got up really early in order to be driving away no later than 8:30.  This morning we had a problem though, we couldn't find my son's book bag anywhere.  The last time we saw it was before holiday break, which started the week before Thanksgiving.  So we ended up going to co-op without it, and guess what?  When we got there, we found the book bag!

I would make such a horrible public school mom, even with only doing a "school" once a week, I can't remember to check my kids bags and find out if they homework.  I am so used to being the one who decides what they are doing, I just can't seem to get used to someone else calling the shots!

Well after co-op, we came home and I relaxed (read Facebooked) for a little while.  Then we had dinner.  After dinner I started my workout, but after a half hour I realized I still needed to do phonics with the kids, so I stopped and did their phonics with them.  By the time we were done it was amost 9:00 PM, so the kids got to play for a few minutes and then go to bed.  I finished my workout while watching Super Nanny and Pinks All Outakes.

Now I am ready for bed too!

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!

The Last Day of this Year, and this Decade...

So this decade is coming to a close, its been a tough year for me, but also a year full of growth. I don't have a lot of New Years resolutions this year, except to be consistent with my children's phonics and math instruction, whether I feel like doing it or not, and to start having my son do more copywork and dictation, I am thinking that since we try to help him memorize bible verses for his Awana book, those might be good starting points for copywork.  He is getting older, and dyslexic or not sooner or later he has to develop the ability to write legibly, to read better, and even to compose his own written messages. We did copywork consistently for awhile, and it really helped him a lot, so I know we need to start it up again.

I am thinking I may also have him do some copywork from "Little House in the Big Woods", since we will be reading it together as a family.

I wish you all a happy New Year!

Philip, My Father in Law

I first met my Father-in-law in 1990, I was dating my future husband and he brought me to meet his parents. I remember my thoughts that day...

I grew up in a family where we showed affection to each other, but not really to people we didn't know really well.  If you came to our house, you would be greeted cordially, but not warmly.  So I was unprepared for what happened when I met my husband's parents.  I entered the door, was introduced, and both of his parents greeted me with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  My father-in-law also grabbed my arm and squeezed it in what I am sure he meant as a friendly gesture... he squeezed so tightly he left bruises where his fingers were.  Both of my husband's parents treated me like a member of the family from the very start, they were great, but I found them a little overwhelming at first, their affectionate behavior would take some getting used to.

When my husband I were married, I was so glad to officially be a member of this loving family.  I rarely ever really thought of my in-laws in the terms that many people think of in-laws, instead I felt like I had two sets of parents, and when my own mom passed away, I took great comfort in knowing that I still had my Mother-in-law, who, along with my Father-in-law, made me feel like I had been adopted by them.

My father-in-law was a no nonsense kind of guy, and while he showed physical affection readily, he didn't express his feelings in words.  He wasn't the kind of guy to often say, "I love you", in fact I am not sure if I ever heard those words from him.  But he showed his love every day.  He always thought about how to help others.  Whether that was by letting us rent a house for much less than he could have gotten from anyone else, building a fence in front of that house to give my first daughter a safe place to play, or giving my husband a riding lawn mower so that he could maintain the property we were blessed with by him and his brother. If I was to make a list of all the ways that man helped over the years, it would be incredibly long, I wonder if he knew just how much I appreciated him, how much I loved him.

He lived next door, and I remember how he would come up to our house, and rather than walking up the door and knocking, he would look into the windows to see if anyone was up and around.  I would be walking through the house and catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye and be so startled.  It used to drive me crazy.  Now that he is gone I am saddened that it will never happen again.

He used to love to tease people, and always had a joking remark about things I would say.  Sometimes I was irritated by that, but the other day as I was considering sharing with my mother-in-law my goals for the coming year, I forgot for just a minute that he was gone, and I imagined the things he might say.  Then I remembered and knew I would give anything to hear him say them.

While he always had a joke to tell, he was never truly critical of me.  Many times he stopped by when the house was a huge mess, but never did he say anything about it.  He always seemed to overlook my faults, as if he couldn't see them.  He would say that I was pretty, but not mention that I was obese.  He would tell me I was doing a great job with my kids, but not mention that I couldn't seem to keep a clean house.  He only mentioned the positive things to me, and never did anything that made me feel like less of a person.

Now he is gone, and I am wondering if he knew how much I loved him and appreciated all this about him.  I know I told him that I loved him, but I don't think I ever sat down and had a heart to heart telling how much I appreciated him, telling him that I thought he was wonderful.  I doubt he would have let me finish if I'd tried, because he really never would sit and listen to someone praise him, he would have shrugged it off and tried to make his good points seem insignificant.

Well, I know he is with the good Lord now, and I don't know if he can see us here on Earth or not, but I pray that somehow he knows how special he was to me, and how much I'll miss him.

Modified Christmas Break

My kids would love to have a full Christmas break, with no homeschool at all.  However, we are behind in phonics due to changing curriculums in October, and then having to take two weeks off in November.  Also, my oldest daughter was given exact instructions on how to do her History, but I realized the other day that she wasn't following those instructions very well.

So my younger kids are continuing Phonics through Christmas break, although I will give them Christmas Eve and Christmas day off, and my oldest is reading to sections a day of her history book out loud to me so we can discuss it.  She will also get time off for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, but no the whole two weeks that we would usually take.

So much for my Christmas break!

Working and Homeschooling

Being a Stay-At-Home parent is the ideal situation for homeschooling, but sadly we do not live in a ideal world, and some of us have to work outside jobs to make ends meet.  This could be because of the week economy, or because someone is a single parent.

For my family it is because of the economy, I work part-time cleaning other people's houses.  I really miss being home full time with kids, having all the time I need to do fun activities and experiments, but at this time working is necessary, so I am finding ways to make homeschooling work in this less than ideal situation.

Recently I have not been managing my time as well as I should, and often things have been left undone.  I don't worry about it too much if its a subject like Science or History, because my kids get those subjects at co-op anyway, I mean, we still try to do them at home, but if we fall behind its not that big a deal.  However, when it comes to Math and Phonics I feel it is vital to do them at least 4 days a week, and lately I've been letting phonics slip more than I'd like.  Math is easy, because my little girl works well alone, and my son uses Teaching Textbooks, so I am not really needed much for that subject.  However when it comes to phonics and reading, I need to be there.  My son is dyslexic, and needs to do his phonics lessons regularly, he also needs my supervision to check his accuracy as he reads.   This has been the issue lately when I work later than expected and return home tired.  I have chosen to skip phonics a few times, and then of course feel guilty about it.

Well today, I got up at 5:30, I worked out for 1 1/2 hours, then I got ready for work and left.  My husband had the kids do Math while I was gone.  I didn't get home until around 4:30, and was tired and hungry, so I rested and had a small lunch.  Then I rested more, I was extra tired because I am still regaining strength after being sick, I just couldn't seem to get the energy to do anything right away.  Later, after I had dinner on the stove, I realized that I needed to do Phonics.  So we did it then, and got done at 7:30, then we ate dinner.  At least I got it done today.  I know that I have to start doing this daily, no matter how tired I am, and I guess today was a good start, I showed that I can do it, even after working an extra long day while suffering fatigue from the H1N1 I recently suffered through.

So I guess the point of my post is that while its difficult, homeschooling can work even if the parent has to have an outside job, but it takes commitment and perseverance. It takes determination, and sometimes it takes just going through the motions to get it done, even when you don't really want to.  I am sure I'll post more on this subject later, as I am trying to work out a good schedule to follow to allow me to always get the things done I need to do.

Merry Christmas!

We FINALLY have our tree up!  As I promised yesterday, I'll post pictures of us decorating it, and of the tree when it is all done.

So here are some pictures of us decorating the tree:

As you can see from those pictures above, Samuel is tall enough now to only need a little step stool in order to put the tree topper on.  You can also see that he started with the star tree topper that I bought for this year, but it was too heavy for our tree, it flopped over to one side and wouldn't stay straight, so we went back to the little Angel we have used for years.

Now for some pictures of the tree all finished:

 

 

 

 

 

 

One thing that we found while decorating was this:

I don't know what happened to poor Mickey... he was in one piece last year when he was put away!  Well, I glued him together, at least all the pieces I could find...

He's still missing a hand.  Maybe we'll find it when we put the ornaments away?

Getting Back to Business

Well, today we were all feeling a little better, not 100% by any means, we still all have nagging coughs that won't go away, but our fevers and most of the fatigue is gone, and our throats are not as sore as they were before.  So we decided to start getting back to the business of homeschooling.

All the younger kids did today was our Advent devotions, Math, and Phonics.  It took most of the day to get it all done though, in fact, the kids  are still working on their phonics worksheets right now.  My older daughter had a more normal day, she gets most of her homeschool done early in the morning, does Math, French, Writing, PE, and Chemistry mostly on her own, History she reads out loud to me and then we discuss the questions in the book together.

We are getting ready to go shopping for a new tree, we have an artificial, pre-lighted tree that is several years old, but the stand got bent, and its too big for our house anyway, so we are going to buy a smaller artificial tree.  Since the cost for a brand new artificial tree is about the same as for a real tree, even all we get is two or three years use out of it, we still saved money, not to mention the hassle of sweeping up pine needles and the fire hazard of a real tree.

My oldest daughter wants a white tree... but I prefer the more real looking green ones.  Maybe I should have the kids vote, or just flip a coin, or maybe I'll play the mom card and get what I want even if they don't like it that much!

Well, I'll post a picture of the tree when we get it decorated, for now I'm signing off.

Well, I Decided.

After much deliberation, I've decided to leave my blog up at homeschoolblogger, even though I also have this blog, I have too many treasured memories in my archived posts there, and too many great contacts to give up on homeschoolblogger altogether, and its really not that difficult to do regular entries there, it is only difficult to do entries with lots of links and embedded Bible verses... those are much easier on here on blogger. So my Bible studies and devotions will move to Moments With My Savior. Also, I am going to give up on Project 365 for the rest of this year, and then next year, I think I'll take it up again, but open a blog on blogger for it, leaving my homeschool blogs for homeschool posts and personal posts, I'll just cross post between the two homeschool blogs.

Speaking of personal posts, I have been so sick that it isn't even funny! But I'm getting better now, and have decided that I need to get busy with my studies again, I have fallen behind because of the fatigue I had when I was sick (H1N1 is no fun!). Now I have to catch up with both my Small Engine Repair course and the Bible Studies I've been working on. Unfortunately, even though I am more eager to do the Bible Study, its the small engine repair that has a deadline attached, so I have to work on that first.

I am fascinated with Mechanics, but not as much as I am with My LORD! So I will work on my Small Engine Mechanics course a little, and then hopefully be able to do more in depth Bible study soon. Reminds me of the book "The Tyranny of the Urgent".

Well, I am glad to finally be on the mend today, still not 100% but definitely better than I have been for about a week. Now I'm off to study!