April and May of 2011 involved a lot of educational diagnostic testing for us. Z and J had reached a frustration level with their respective challenges and group expectations for boys their age (at the time 9 and 11) that caused me to seek additional help.

Earlier in the Fall we had finally sought a formal diagnosis for Z’s dyslexia, and in the spring chose to get a formal diagnosis for his autism (PDD-NOS), so that we could get an occupational therapy referral for him.

In May, as I was wrapping my mind around different ways to help Z and help him learn more efficiently, I ran across a new product that homeschooling mom Sarah Brown and her husband Josh were developing – Dyslexia Games.

As soon as I heard about it, I jumped on board, downloading the free samples they were offering at the time and then later buying the first pack they offered.

Why?

Because these little games that they’ve created looked like really fun ways to incorporate visual discrimination therapy in a very cost effective way.

Sarah’s story of how she developed these games and exercises for her daughters, who have dyslexia and autism diagnoses, struck a chord with me, especially as this was a time where I was heavily reading and searching for therapy solutions that would fit in my  budget.

After taking a look at the worksheets, I chose to incorporate them into our full-schoolwork schedule. And not just for Z, but also for the girls and for J, who tracks adhd inattentive and is diagnosed with a written expression disorder.

Both Kgirl and J were late readers, and though Little E reads well for her age, she still reverse numbers and letters at times. So, I figured, why not?  Couldn’t hurt to have them all do the games too. And it surely didn’t.

So What are Dyslexia Games?

Dyslexia Games is a series of visual art and puzzle exercises designed specifically for  children who tend to think and learn visually. Visual thinkers, especially those with dyslexia, adhd, and high functioning autism (Asperger’s and PDD-NOS), sometimes have trouble anchoring letters, and often reverse, flip, or confuse letters, numbers, and other symbols.

Sarah created these fun little patterns, art, and other puzzles to help train kids like hers to look at pictures and symbols and perceive  where the differences and similarities are.  The activities start off simply and get more complex as you progress through them.

What seem like fun, intriguing little puzzles are actually powerful therapy devices for training how visualize and perceive letters, numbers, and symbols.

Each exercise starts with a picture or a pattern. Then the game is to complete the next picture or pattern exactly like the first. You find what is missing and fill it in

And as the kids progress in skills, they take on more complex drawings like these:

While the name specifies Dyslexia, Series A is actually great for any one with pre- or early readers or for kids who have signs of dyslexia or are struggling with reading. I wish I had them in my arsenal when Kgirl and J were learning to read, especially J.

Series B is designed for kids who are already reading at a 2nd grade level or above but are still struggling with reversals, letter confusion, and spelling errors. The detailed visual discrimination exercises also help with those with messy handwriting – but shhh… don’t tell the kids. I have awful handwriting! they’ll want me to use them too

So How am I using Dyslexia Games?

After sharing about these on a support group for homeschooling children with dyslexia, Lisa asked me:

I am curious how you use it? Do you do one worksheet a day? Do you work
through the workbooks in a certain order? or switch back and forth?

So to answer… like I said, I’ve incorporated these into our Full Schoolwork schedule.  We don’t to them everyday. Though you certainly can.

When we first started using them, we started our day with them. As I was fixing breakfast, I asked the kids to work on one.  In the beginning, I found that Z and J needed to break one page down across a few days to keep it fun instead of “work”.

The directions recommend 20 minutes, I don’t think we ever spend that long on them – maybe 10 to 15 minutes.  Would we progress further with more time or more frequency? Maybe. But I’m very careful especially with Z and J to not overload them and cause blocks to learning. They already have enough to deal with, they don’t need more frustration.

My point is to give them little bits that will help them, not overwhelm them and frustrate them further. So for us, it’s just 10-15 minutes. When they finish a  sheet or what we’ve agreed on, then they are done with it and move on to their other schoolwork.

Now, we are no longer starting our day with these, simply because I’m usually still asleep when Z starts his schoolwork (he likes to get his schoolwork and chores done early so the rest of the day is his to play.) Sometimes we’ll do these on the go, just something to do or pass the time with. Sometimes we fit them in between other subjects.

I tend to go through the workbooks in order, choosing activities that will appeal to the boys particularly. There’s a few exercises that are “girly” (i.e., flowers and butterflies,etc.) that I don’t think they’ll respond well to, so I skip those if I think they won’t miss much by skipping it. But I’ll print those out out for the girls to work on.

My original goal was to just print all of them and put them in 3-prong folders for them, but I’ve yet to get to that yet. But that’s my ideal… to just put together folders for them to work through. But for now, I print them one page at time or a few days of sheets at a time.

You can adapt them to your style and to your current plan, be structured with it or loose and relaxed with it. I know that they have helped train both my boys to look at things a little closer, to recognize similarities and differences in symbols. and they have definitely helped Z, who tends to rotate or flip letters in his head, to anchor the letters in his mind.

Where to Get Dyslexia Games?

If you’d like to give Dyslexia Games a try, be sure to check out their website. They offer both a downloadable pdf set of the two series and printed copies they mail to you.

Also, they sometimes run specials like this one, so watch for those – cuz it’s a really great deal no matter what but with a special… it’s just awesome.

But even at full price, it’s just a tiny fraction of what professional therapy costs (!).  And, it also supports another homeschooling family – and idea I very much like

In my Smashing Rocks for Science post, I mentioned that we are using Connect the Thought’s Geology curriculum as a framework for our geology study, specifically because it gives me high school geology for K and allows me to adjust for the rest of the kids. 

Since then, Michael asked:

First of all, thank you for providing the link to the Geology curriculum you’re using with your kids. I’m very interested in trying it with my own homeschool high school aged son. Can you tell me what it consists of? Is it a textbook? Are there lesson plans or tests? And finally, about how much time are you planning on devoting to the course? I’m trying to find out if it would count as a full credit or half on his high school transcript.
I appreciate any help you can provide. Sort of new to the whole homeschooling thing, and a bit overwhelmed.

First, Thank you Michael for the question.  I’ll try to explain things in writing below, but if you have the ability to watch it, here’s a video review I did today for you, answering the questions and showing you exactly what Connect the Thoughts Geology is, and what you need for it. 

What does it consist of?

Connect the Thoughts Geology is a complete secular high school (ages 11 and up) geology curriculum written for the student, and designed for indepedent study.  It consists of 78 lessons, about 90-100 hours of study. Each lesson follows the Connect the Thoughts study methodology, which is a little bit different than most curriculums.

For each lesson, there’s

• vocabulary for the reading
• geography for the reading, if needed
• hands-on exercises and experiments to help concrete the concepts
• 25-50 word writing prompts or questions to further concrete the concepts (I use these as discussion questions)

Overall, this is a thorough exploration of geology, originally written to give the students the education they needed to be well-educated without going on further to college. So it uses and covers materials that would be covered in more advanced geology classes, but with a study methodology that works well for students as young as 11 to do indepentently. (I’m adpating it for students age 7, 9, 11, and 13)

Topics wise it covers:

• What is Geology
• Plate tectonics
• How Earth was made (conventional view point, including Panagea)
• Minerals
• Rocks
• The interior of our planet
• Earthquakes and how they’re measured
• Volcanoes
• Weathering and Erosion
• Geology and history  (conventional viewpoint)
• Geology in our everyday lives

I do need emphasize that this is a secular geology curriculum. It covers conventional explanations of how the earth was created and developed. It does *not* include a creationist view of how the earth was formed; that’s up the parents to provide and compare and contrast with their students. For me, I’m good with this, but if you aren’t, then you will either need to skip these section of the course  or look for a geology course that covers it from a creationist view point.

Is it a textbook? Are there lesson plans or tests?

Many of the Connect the Thoughts courses including the textbook reading, but not Geology. It does require the additional purchase of a relatively inexpensive book called Geology: A Self-Teaching Guide  I got my copy off of Amazon for about $13 and you can find it used on Amazon for less. There’s also a Kindle version.

You also need access to The Amazing Earth video and the Journey to the Center of the Earth video. I ordered The Amazing Earth used from Amazon for less than $10, and am getting Journey to the Center of the Earth via Netflix.  So in all, with the curriculum (purchased on sale), plus the added book, video, and clay I needed for the plate tectonics section, I spent about $45 total.

Basically what you get with Connect the Thoughts Geology is a complete independent study guide for the student to go through on their own (though I’m using it with a group of students). It explicitly tells the student what to do.  And the end of each major section, there is a test. But tests in Connect the Thoughts are not-graded, instead they are used to verify mastery and understanding.

For more on how a connect the thoughts studyis laid out, I recommend downloading the free “how to do Connect the Thoughts” course. And of course you can see the actually Geology course in the video above.

If you go with this curriculum, your student will need access to the outdoors to do some of the investigative exerices and experiments (like smashing rocks ) 

Also, there’s a few miscellaneous materials needed (like clay or magnets) for some of the experiments, so it’s a good idea to have the students give you a list of what they need for the coming week, or to read ahead yourself to make sure you have everything on hand. To my knowledge there is no materials list available just for this purpose of making sure you have everything you need (a pet peeve, but workable still)

About how much time are you planning on devoting to the course?

The geology course is designed specifically to be a semester course, but is actually longer than the normal 60-70 hours. It is part of the Connect the Thoughts 3 part Earth Sciences series, which in all covers 1.5 credits.  I’ll be awarding a .5 credit (semester) to K when we complete the Geology course. 

We’re doing the course about 3 hours a week, so we should be done with it in 20-25 weeks. But this also lends it self well to intensively working through the Geology curriculum as well, in which case you can complete the course easily within a month.

A few more key points

This is not our first connect the thoughts course, we’ve done several. and I go into on the video a little more about what I like and don’t like about the curriculum and how I’m adapting the Geology course to suit my needs.  But overall, if you are looking for a secular high school geology course, this is a good one to consider.

I will emphasize also that this curriculum as well as all of the Connect the Thoughts courses we’ve tried are designed for the kids to think for themselves. It introduces a variety of information, but doesn’t want the students to regurgitate it back, but rather to own their own education and their own thoughts and opinions. If this is your goal, like it is ours, this is a wonderful benefit to the curriculum. If you aren’t ready for that…well, might want to look else where.

To give you a further idea of how the Connect the Thoughts science curriculum is structured, I recommend watching the videos that Steven has on the Connect the Thoughts site and reading through some of the articles. It’ll give you more of an idea of the man behind the curriculum and his thoughts and style.

(A side benefit to using Connect the Thoughts is the access to it’s author. Steven is really good at personally answering quesstions and is active in the Connect the Thoughts Yahoo Group.)

If Connect the Thoughts Geology sounds like something you’d like to try with your student, you can download your copy from CurrClick. And be sure to agree to get the email updates, because Steven does a great job of doing sales for those of us on a budget, and the sales are announced through those email updates.

So there you go…  If you have more questions about our experiences with Connect the Thoughts or the Geology course in particular, feel free to ask.

…Shannon

P.S. Looks like Steven is running a 20% off sale on all Connect the Thoughts courses this week too, The geology course is coming up on sale for $16 until Sunday, February 20th.

In my attempt to bring us back to learning together as a family more, I’ve been creatively trying to balance K & J’s need to learn middle school and high school geology with introducing the topic to Little E and Z. 

Now obviously mixing first and third grade with sixth and ninth grades, means some very different levels of detail presented.  Because I need the high school level for K, I’m using Connect the Thoughts Geology as our base geology curriculum,  and then incorporating the younger kids into the hands-on activities, and adding in some notebooking and lapbooking techniques to help with illustrations and retention all around.

While we got to play with Clay this month to help understand plate tectonics, the best experiments came from smashing rocks

Of course there was a point to smashing rocks: to understand what clues and marks geologists would use to identify rocks that may have at one time been one.

But it was a fun experiment, and we discoved  an ant colony living inside Z’s rock, so that was a bonus biology lesson

Z & Little E got so into smashing rocks they decided to be geologists for the day and set out to invesigate all they could about the rocks and the rock fragments we had that day. And they asked me to take a few pictures to share with you:

And of course  Little E had to get into one for you too (but she forgot to smile for some reason

Last week Bobbie asked me about the Bob Books and what we use to teach reading. Now if you’ve been following along with these Learning to Read posts, you know that so far I have two voracious readers who came to reading relatively late, one flourishing beginning reader, and one struggling dyslexic, soon to be reader.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve looked at and tried out a lot of different reading materials, and I’ve pulled what works for us and our learning styles from a variety of sources. At this point, I’m pretty comfortable with teaching reading and have complete confidence that even my struggling reader will eventually love to read.

One of the books that helped K and I break through her barriers was Reading Reflex combined with a set of plastic letter tiles.

I since have used the techniques taught in Reading Reflex with all the children, even Z. And those lessons that I’ve done with Z from this book, have stuck the best with him.

Our favorite and most effective exercises from this book are the auditory processing exercises that teach specific sounds and how blending them in different ways creates new and different words.

Combining the use of plastic letter tiles with a small segment of sounds that make up a variety of different words, we engage mind, body, and senses to learn how words are made.

We start out with a pile of letter tiles, from which I have the child choose the specific tiles (“sound pictures”) we need for the exercise

Next, from that small set of sounds, I ask the child to create the first word on my list:

Then from there, I say, “now, let’s turn ‘Sat’ into ‘pat’” and the child figures out which sound needs to change to create the new word. And this goes on through our list of words.

Then we do our final words, which usually end up swapping out the middle or last sound, so they further see how changing around sounds comes up with completely new words.

And then to end it off, I have the child put the letter tiles away, and we have a game for that too. But this has been a very effective way to teach phonological sounds, CVC words, and word structure.

This is but one exercise from Reading Reflex, and definitely our favorite. If you are looking for a way to further explain reading to a kinesthetic learner, or one that focuses better if they can move, this is a wonderful exercise.

On my Learning to Read: Celebrating Success post, Bobbie  asked about the Bob Books, a series of books for beginning readers that we use. So I thought I’d do a quick review.

The Bob Books are these short little books, that come in sets of 12, that incrementally build on each other. The very first book, covers just four sounds (M, A, S, T) and on sight word (on), and each book builds from there.

The stories are so short and so doable for a beginning reader that they instantly give the child a sense of success. They’ve read an entire book!

It’s an incredible thing to be able celebrate, and the beauty of the Bob Books is that they give that opportunity to succeed early and often. 

The books themselves are not a reading program and should not be used on their own. Every child needs help learning the phonemic sounds, phonological sound combinations, and sight words of the English language. What the Bob Books give are an opportunity to practice reading in a book format very quickly, building on that sense of success.

Personally I’ve looked at and tested a LOT of different reading materials and tools over the last 10 years, as I’ve sought materials to help my own children learn to read, and I have to say that the Bob Books are crucial element to our reading program, especially at that early reader stage.

Even Z feels success with these books (he’s able to read the first few, and that knowledge that he can read at least some books, helps build his confidence and motivation for further reading).

Here’s an example of what you’ll find in a Bob Book. I grabbed the third book from the first set off our shelf. It’s title is “Dot”. 

As you’d expect the book is about Dot. The whole book uses 9 words total to tell the story of Dot, her dog and cat, and a hat.  So there’s a lot of repetition of common words, using sounds the child already knows.

At the beginning of each book is a list of the sounds that are covered in the book, which is helpful for determining if your child knows the sounds they need for that particular book.

Each page in the first set usually only has one sentence, but I have noticed that towards the end of each book, there might be a page that has one or more. So the child is feeling confident on each page, and has read the words in the book a few times before they get to a page with more words, like this:

As you can see the pictures in the book are simple, and not overwhelming, which for my kids is very important. When they are learning a new skill, they do much better on pages that are simple and in black and white, so this works perfectly for us.

I borrowed my first set for K, when she was just beginning her learning to read journey, as I always like to test something before buying it. Since then I of course have purchased my own copies (and have lent them out a few times too) of all three sets. J used these in early in his learning to read journey, as has Little E.  

Z of course is still working through the first few books, but that’s Z and with his dsylexia these books play an important role in his feeling successful in his efforts.

Again, these are not a complete program, but rather one (essential) tool in your learning to read tool box. I do use other readers as well, but these are the first that my children use in their journey.

If you don’t already have access to the Bob Books, I recommend either borrowing a copy from a friend or fellow homeschooler, looking for a used copy (if you can find them), or grabbing a set on sale. (Today as I write this I see Amazon has a great price on them, so you might check there as well)

Hope this helps!

…Shannon

P.S. Thanks Bobbie (Clumsy Crafter) for asking the question!

P.S. S. Here are a few more of the resources we use for Learning to Read: