Sounds like a news-room sound bite, doesn't it?   A list of all the upcoming news stories to 'stay tuned' for.  But, in this case,  it is just a brief snippet of the areas I am wanting to target for each of my children.

11 yo daughter:  She loves, loves, loves to read.  This is a great thing.  Writing, however is extremely challenging for her.  Both handwriting and getting ideas down on paper are painfully difficult.  Focus on showing the steps of writing so that she can do it in stages - a little at a time.  We have an exercise that may help with handwriting, in addition to going over the Handwriting Without Tears program.  But, when involved in thinking process of writing, handwriting just gets lost.  For this, we are focusing on bilding up the working memory, which is low. We are using Brain Builder to help with that.  And then there's math.  Long division requires large graph paper and much patience.  Little by little.

9 yo daughter:  Biggest area of focus right now is reading fluency and comprehension.  Having some struggles there.  Spelling also needs help.  Creativity is supplied in abundance.

8 yo son:  Biggest area of focus right now:  Reading - just beginning to come along with this now, and handwriting is very similar to 11 yo daughter's.   Makes math a challenge, although he is great with math in his head.  Numbers get jumbled when doing written work, and this causes trouble.

6 year old -  sounding out 3 letter words and writing letters correctly.  Math right now is deemed kind of  fun.

1 year old -  getting her to sit and enjoy books read by myself and all of the above siblings.

These are my emphasis targets for the moment.  It is something I need to look at from time to time so that I can see where we need to go and figure out how to get there.

We got some wonderful insight from the woman who did the psychometric testing on our dd9.  The results pinpointed areas of weakness, and she explained how various combinations of those weaknesses would result in the particular problems we were observing.  It helped us understand why certain things are so difficult for her.

 

Many of her struggles were lumped into 'phonemic dyslexia' and 'phonemic dysgraphia'.  I'm not too concerned about what the label is, I'm just glad to have some idea of what kinds of specific things I can do to help her.

 

We were given lots of suggestions for things to work with her on.  The tester was very encouraging in that, with some targeted work, she would likely do very well.  We've started her on Earobics II, a computer program.  It is designed to help strengthen auditory memory/processing, as well as increase phonemic awareness.  She likes doing this each day, and in fact, dd8 and ds6 are also using the program. 

 

The next thing to add is a detailed phonics program.   She decodes well and likes to read, but has trouble with encoding.  She can't distinguish the individual sounds  - thus the difficulty with spelling.  I've chosen a program, and plan on using with the oldest 3 kids.  DD8 has some similar difficulties with reading, so I think it would benefit her as well.  DD6 is just starting to be interested in figuring out how to read, so he may as well join us!

 

We were given lots of ideas for study techniques/tools for helping her with particular things.  It was very helpful.  Now, we have to do the work needed to help her improve!

 

 

Mamatc posted a question as to how my dd was doing.  I am thinking she meant my oldest one (9) who we have been thinking may have some learning disabilities.  God gave us a big answer to prayer on this just last week.

 

We have spent the last month looking for someone who does private testing on this, as HSLDA strongly recommends not using the public schools for this.  All of our leads were getting us nowhere, and it was a bit discouraging.  We even got to the point where we decided to call our school system for info, as we weren't finding any private solutions.

 

Last Tuesday, the school system called back, and I was pretty surprised at how antagonistic they were.  They demanded way too much information on our school records, which we were not going to give them.  We never called them back to make arrangements to begin the paperwork.  My husband said we would find another way and that God would take care of it.

 

The very next day, I received a phone call from a woman whose name I had been given earlier in the month.  I had e-mailed her twice, and never heard back from her.  It turns out that she had just been incredibly busy.  She is a Christian woman who does testing for one of the school systems during the day, and then tests privately in the evenings.  She told me she views this as her ministry.  She is only charging us a fraction of what we had been told to expect, and she said she would accept less if we couldn't have afforded that amount!

 

Even better, she wanted to do the testing this week (her spring break).  And, she is coming over to our house to do it.  So dd9 can do this right in our own kitchen, where she will feel comfortable!  I feel so much at ease that a dear, Christian woman is doing this.  We are very thankful to God for sending her our way.  I know she will help our daughter feel at ease about it all.

 

The end goal is really for us to find out what, if any, her learning issues might be.  Then, we can better understand the ways in which particular things can be a struggle.  That way, I can adapt how we approach some of those things, so that she can best learn in a way that works for her.

 

Thanks for your prayers.