Friday, December 24, 2010

As we come to the end of the year

The last couple of weeks have been so busy. We have had parties to attend and we had a party at our house. There was baking to do and gifts to wrap. Oh, and we were supposed to have school as well. It was hard to find time to do our regular school curriculum so I started looking around to find something else to do. I thought a good place to start would be games to improve vocabulary. I found a great website full of games for this. The great thing is they have games in French, German, Spanish, and Lain. It's fun for him and I have plenty of time to get everything finished that I needed to do. He still plays all the great games at LearningGamesForKids too.

As we come to the end of this year, I have been looking back over the work he is doing. We still struggle a lot with reading. But I find him improving bit by bit. He does really well in math and he loves science. But reading is a struggle. At times I think about looking at special education tools for him. Most of the time I just think I need to wait for him to grow a bit more. I know in Waldorf circles they don't even start to teach reading until the kids are 8 years old. So why should I worry that my 8 year old doesn't read well yet. Like I said, his reading is improving all the time. He got a lo of Captain Underpants books for holiday gifts. Last night he was looking through them. I think they will help a lot with his reading. They are cute and funny and geared to a third grade boy. He spent a lot of time looking at them. And he was laughing at some of the jokes so I know he was reading them.

We're at the halfway mark in most of his subjects. I'm sure we will finish everything by the end of the school year. I'll post an update in a few months to let you know how things are going.

5 comments:

  1. If you do become more concerned about it, you might look into both vision and neurodevelopmental therapies. Both helped my older daughter tremendously.

    Keep up the great work!

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  2. My son was slow to warm up to reading. It was his older sister's diligence that finally lit a fire under him. She found lots of books that held his interest, beginning with the Alex Rider and Percy Jackson series. That was when he was twelve. Before that I found the best thing was to feed his visual needs with classics adapted for graphic novels, and to let him pick the shorter, easy books. I also looked for suggestions at guysread.com. If you can tell his reading is improving, I wouldn't worry too much. Some of us (and I do include myself) are just slower to catch on. Often all it takes is the right book at the right time. Patience is the key. When it clicks, he will devour books.

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  3. Our youngest son who has dyslexia didn't latch onto the reading thing very well until he was around eight years old. But now he reads voraciously (and sometimes into the wee hours of the night to his mom's dismay!) ;) It WILL happen...try not to worry too much.

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  4. Trying to get my son to sit and read is a struggle too! What worked for me was to take the pressure off. He was under so much pressure to read in public school that he hated it. Once we started homeschooling I started a reading time before bed. He and I each sat with our own book for 1/2 an hour. I told him I wasn't going to ask him any questions about it, I just wanted him to sit with me with a book. I didn't even care if he just looked at pictures and didn't read. I just wanted him enjoying a book. Before I knew it he had found a book that caught his interest and he now wants to read to me at night! He'll still tell you he hates to read, and it still isn't something he chooses on his own. However, we are making progress and I'm starting to see the enjoyment in his face. Hang in there!

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  5. I find it's difficult to decide if there's an LD or not since homeschooling only allows me to compare my son to his sisters who all are reading fine. One of my daughters did not start to take off with reading until she was 9 and even into 10 her comprehension started to improve by leaps and bounds. But my son is 10 and still reads very slow and still prefers to be read to.

    I also use special ed. approaches with him that he responds to with success. In particular, I get two copies of the same book and he follows along as I read. This has helped with tracking and using a bright green index card has helped him to follow along, as well.

    Good luck!

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