I read on a post somewhere that Earobics was good to train the ear to recognize sounds. I have a kindergartener that is already 6yrs. old that can tell me the sound a letter makes, but when it comes to reading SV words, he has trouble with blending. He can make the individual sounds, but then cannot blend them together to make the word. He often says a word that begins with the last sound he just made, which tells me it is a memory problem. He has pretty bad speech problems, and is recieving sp. therapy once a week. Mom doesn’t want him to repeat kindergarten. I have sent a HOP kit home with them to practice at night. If this is not successful, I wanted to know about whether to recommend the Earobics home program. I looked it up on the website & it looks like it would be helpful.
Karloon's Balloons..
is the exercise in Earobics that addresses auditory memory. It was the most difficult exercise for my dd (who was also in K at time). She could not master Karloon’s Balloons until after we did Brainbuilder. After only a month of BB, she was able to complete Karloon’s Balloons and went onto Earobics Step 2 with no difficulties.
I also saw DIRECT coorelation between improving her auditory memory (digit span) and blending. With every jump in digit span, her blending improved.
If he has difficulty with Karloon’s Balloon’s, then you are probably correct in memory being part of the problem.
Practicing blending DAILY using Reading Reflex exercises also helps.
Blending can be taught directly. In most cases, it just takes time and work.
The problem of repeating the last sound, rather than the sounds in order, is quite common and may or may not be a memory problem; most of the time I see it, it’s a problem that the student doesn’t understand what you’re getting at and is making wild guesses, and this can very often be helped by consistent modelling of the intended skill.
To avoid continually reposting the same thing, email me if you’re interested and I’ll send you the note I made up — or you can use the search feature on this page.