dyslexia
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3 of My Favorite Dyslexia Resources
Every family with over one child will tell you no two kids are the same. Especially in learning styles and strengths. In my home, we have many difficulties, some diagnose and some left undocumented. Dyslexia is one of the loudest in our homeschool. Here are three resources we use to battle dyslexia. Let’s get straight to the list: Homeschooling with Dyslexia— this fantastic resource is more than just a website. It’s a one-stop learning platform to teach you (the parent/teacher) how to live with and teach your dyslexic kiddo. Marrianne was my first stop to educate myself on how to educate my student. She’s also the first place I send…
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Upgrading with Teaching Textbooks
Dyslexia doesn’t stop with reading and writing. Math gets tossed into the mix- just for fun. After years of trying many curriculums, Teaching Textbooks came to our family’s rescue! Now, as I’m watching my kiddos grow and learn, I get to introduce you to the upgraded, improved, and still life-saving Teaching Textbooks 4.0. Teaching Textbooks is a computer-based math program for elementary through High School. My family has used it for years! Not only does it instruct my kiddos in easy-to-understand, playful, humorous, and simple ways- but it also grades them for me. All I have to do is check their grade books and check in on their progress now…
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Meet Tip and Lex: Spotlight on Lex
Homeschooling a family with more than one child means homeschooling more than one learning style and ability. My family is no exception. We have one typical learner that we’ll call Tippi and one not-so-typical learner we’ll call Lex. While each has its own style, pitfalls, and strengths in this series we’ll focus on Lex and what we’ve used to support her in our school. Lex has several diagnoses in her portfolio. Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, Auditory Processing Disorders, Visual Processing Disorders, ADHD, and special short-term memory issues that amplify them all. With as many labels, there are three times the treatment and specialized curriculum used to address them. Here’s what we’ve…
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Meet Our Math Time Buddy
Dyslexia is a giving disability. It gives us trouble in reading, trouble in writing, and trouble in math. This equals hands-on Mom and me school time, all day long. When my student was still little this was a blessing. It was a time to reassure and comfort my struggling learner. The older my student gets the more independence they crave and the more frustrated they become when they NEED mom’s help. Enter Teaching Textbooks After hours of repeated and laborious instruction in reading and writing, the last thing my mother/child relationship needs is another round in math. Teaching Textbooks works fabulously for my struggling learner. I oversee everything, from a…
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Using Clay in our Homeschool
Learning how to cope with and use dyslexia isn’t a walk in the park. It’s an epic trek across foreign lands rife with new foes and hidden dangers. Or at least it can feel that way. In the past two posts about reading remediation we’ve chatted about fluency practice and Pathway Readers. In the Pathway Reader post, I told you I write down words that stump my student. This post will explain what I do with those words. When my child was first diagnosised with dyslexia, our assessor offered many techniques and solutions to get us started on the road to reading and understanding. One of the methods suggested was…
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Pathway Readers & Dyslexia
I sat on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, cradling my sobbing eleven-year-old. I prayed, patted her hair, and tried to be the encouraging mama. But nothing soothed my student. What caused all the tears? A boring reader. Dyslexia is hard. When your child enters tweendom the differences between kids show more fiercely. My child was noticing. Not body types or fashion sense but her lag in reading ability and speed. Then, on top of all of that, after battling with dyslexia through a tutoring session her reward was a boring, kindergarten reader. The same boring and senseless sentences. It was so hard on my student I began writing my own short…
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Victory Drill Book
How our family uses Victory Drill Book for reading remediation. This post might contain affiliate links. Just thought you’d like to know. We’ve used many, many, MANY tools, sets, and kits to help teach reading. I could cheer for several curriculum and program providers. Some work quickly and then fizzle. Others take too long to integrate and discourage my students. In our home, reading curriculums work until they don’t. Changes in hormones, changes in mental capacity, and changes in attention span interfere and morph our remediation routines and needs. This mama is tired of stalling and running off to purchase the next package that promises to help, only to reach…
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Dyslexia Awareness Discount
October is dyslexia awareness month. Being a family dealing with the disability, I couldn’t be left out of the celebration. Yes, dyslexia difficult to master. We have days of clamorous victory and days we’re barely staving off defeat. Reading feels impossible. Catching up is the normal. But dyslexia isn’t all gloom. The dyslexics I’ve encountered have grit. They have spunk and determination. They can see into problems and through issues without a double glance. Dyslexics are inventive problem solvers and compassionate creatives. If you have a dyslexic in your life, give them a squeeze and cheer them on. To celebrate my book Diary of a Dyslexic Homeschooler will be on…
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Keys to Free your Struggling Learner
My struggling learner was different from birth. She has, this mystifying and mysterious form of eye contact. It is nearly its own language. She’d spend hours talking to me without words. She studied everything from the comfort of my lap, snuggled and sedate. She smiled and twinkled, as her brother performed for her infant eyes. When she did begin to speak, she talked in an accent and often flipped syllables in her words. Turing words like magazine into mazageen. She’d work for long minutes, explaining and describing simple objects, like broccoli, instead of using their names because you could not remember what to call them. Friends at church or at…
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Our Classically Mason Day
Let me say first off if you haven’t yet read the post Classically Charlotte Mason you may be a bit lost. Second, I’ll add, we don’t have a true schedule. What follows is our routine. Subjects shift in order from day to day and their instruction times flex as needed. The schedule below is using our Jr. High curriculum. This is just our basic every ordinary homeschool day. I hope it encourages you to make your family homeschool your own. Bible and Reasoning We try to do this in the evenings as a family and so it doesn’t’ feel like actual “school work” even though it is. It takes about 15 minutes…
