Do any of you have any experience using Lindamood-Bell Vanilla Vocabulary or the new Seeing Stars Vocabulary? Oddly, I called LB on Friday and the lady said her boss who could answer my questions about these programs was gone for the day. I thought that was very strange that they only had one person who could answer questions about their programs at the national headquarters! My questions were very basic as to content and intended age levels.
Janis
hi janis,
my 11 year old has logged many, many hours of lindamood bell instruction at their main clinic in california. as he does not have any problems in comprehension he worked primarily in LIPS and then Seeing Stars. I am not that familiar with the V.V. program, but understand it’s basic premise. he did some V.V. in the context of his everyday reading. as he does not struggle with comprehension, i noticed that sometimes the things the clinicians were asking him about what he “saw” after he read something were too much for him; they wanted more and more information about the pictures he saw of what he was reading. honestly, my some told me he would sometimee just “make up things about what he “saw” to please them. V.V. was not something he really needed anyway….
lmbell’s approach to vocabulary words i thought was great - my child was part of their “school program” - i.e. he went to lm bell for 3months straight/6 hours per day - so they made time for vocabulary. they used 3x5 cards (which he already had boxes of since 3x5 cards are used for their word boxes). he would write the word and a short description on one side of thr card and draw a picture of it on the other side of the card. they went through these vocabulary word cards just like seeing stars goes through word cards, with lots of repetition and also played games with the vocabulary word cards.
it was often the funnest part of his 6 hour day at lm bell. and he did retain the new vocabulary words he learned.