V/V vs. IdeaChain

Just my view—I don’t have Mindprime, but I do have the V/V book. I actually was discouraged from doing V/V myself because the book called on the teacher to come up with suitable pictures, for which numerous criteria had to be met. The book included pictures, but they were like a coloring book, and YOU would have to color them in or spend hours at the library looking for books with pictures that met the criteria. (LMB didn’t have books available as I believe they may have now.) Also, I found the timelines for doing things were rather vague in the V/V book and it wasn’t clear how an inexperienced and untrained mother could confidently move from one level to the next. (Having said that, I understand that there are mothers who have successfully used the V/V book.)

Had I known about it, I would have probably gone for Ideachain instead because: all the materials are included, the lessons are scripted and all laid out so an untrained person can do them confidently in an appropriate step by step fashion and not worry whether they have spent enough time on an activity. Their site also offers ongoing assistance and a moneyback guarantee so you could always order it, look it over, and return it if you don’t think it’s helpful. (Perhaps you could also order V/V and return it after looking it over so you could compare.)

I ended up sending my son to an LMB center, spending much money and a lot of his time. I hesitate to say this, because others are very enthusiastic about LMB, but results were minimal, particularly in relation to the cost. Certainly financially, and perhaps also in terms of results, I would have been better off with Ideachain. (Also, don’t you have three other children?—you could think of the cost amortizing pretty efficiently over the four of them.)

Please, don’t be afraid to say things. We need honest feedback.

I think it is helpful to know what works for what type of child because different things work for different children.

I don’t know if my son would have been able to learn to visualize at a LMB center because he has some pretty severe vision issues. He needed vision therapy.

I think it is kind of like the child who can’t do well with phonemic awareness programs without the listening program and fast forward first.

V/V is really easy to do and just being a teacher doesn’t qualify you to be able to present it well. All you would have had to do is color the pictures and start in the book, you still can. Your child may learn better with you doing the teaching than whoever did it in LMB. I have never bothered to look at the timeline because all students learn at different rates of speed. It has never taken me as long as the recommended hours to help a child with visualizing. I also work in the student’s core books, whether in social studies or science. My final test is when I assign a section in social studies, give a time limit, and then test without having the student study for the test. If he does well, missing one or two questions, then I let him practice what he has learned and see how he does. I also teach them how to write after V/V using Step Up to Writing and Inspiration.

But thanks for the vote of confidence in mothers over the LMB trainers. I had played with the idea of myself doing V/V for my ds. After five weeks, four hours a day of V/V, LMB recommended another six weeks of same. As he pretty much detested it, I took a pass. He now sees a tutor twice a week who is working on vocabulary and critical thinkings type things.

Based your reviews, I bought Read Naturally 7th grade for ds (who will be 13), which arrived last week. Before ordering, I printed off the seventh grade selection, had him read it aloud (about 125 wpm I reckon, if I took off for mistakes). Then I had him answer the questions, all of which he got right. So I am really not sure that visualization is the problem. We are beginning today to work on speed with Read Naturally. I really like that he can pretty much do all of it on his own, with me just administering the test for passing.

(One thing I don’t like about RN—the website does not give good instructions for determing the starting level of a child so you know which level to buy. I just improvised based on other information on the web. The problem is that if you buy the wrong level, you don’t know it until you’ve used the diskettes, which are then not returnable. A school would of course buy all levels—people doing this at home, howeve, have tighter budgets.)

Besides a lag in fluency, I think his problems have more to do with weak vocabulary and difficulties with making inferences, in addition to problems with organizing thoughts for writing. I have been trying to work on this all year with him, but it has proved difficult—too much homework and the writing assignments his teacher gives assumes way too much about the kids’ mastery of the basic fundamentals of writing—and definitely not just my child’s. And then we have the problem of a near-adolescent taking direction from his mother. I just wish every English curriculum used in the schools would take kids through a step by step writing program.

Can V/V be done with a group of students or just individually?

Where can I learn more about Idea Chain? Can you give me a web address?

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