Multipulcation tables with poor retrievel skills

You need to find someone trained in PACE to provide it to your child so it will be a lot more expensive than Audiblox. You can purchase Audiblox yourself and be the tutor. PACE would cost a lot more money. Audiblox is currently $150 for an at-home kit. Both cover cognitive skills and auditory as well as visual areas.

Hi Willow,
If you have a very difficult time working with your daughter, PACE might be the best solution. Audiblox is something you’d have to do yourself. And to be effective you’d want to do at least 20-40 minutes daily.

Actually, I’m not doing a lot with my son at the moment. I haven’t started him on PACE yet. We just had him tested at LMB (Lindamood Bell) and are scheduled to get the results this week. There’s a good chance we’ll enroll him in their program. If we do, we will pull him out of school during those weeks and arrange for some “homeschooling” through his teacher. Fortunately, his teacher fully supports us with whatever we decide to do.

I was planning to start PACE following LMB (or instead of it if we decide not to do LMB). Then after we finish PACE, I was thinking I’d start working with my son using Audiblox and Vision Therapy.

I know it’s not easy fitting in all kinds of therapy into the daily routine. I’ve worked with my son quite a lot over the last two years (Reading Reflex, Language Wise, Audiblox, Vision Therapy, timed reading, daily reading at both easy and challenging levels, word list decoding practice, Sequential Spelling, some Seeing Stars, Brainbuilder, etc….), and it really is a challenge to fit this stuff in. I’ve never tried to do it all in one day, but rather planned these activities out based on my son’s weakest areas and what combination would be the best way to address the weaknesses.

I would suggest to select the program you are going to use and stick with that. Using several programs or bits of each doesn’t sound very consistent and effective to me. Address what needs to be addressed first, and then move on.

Actually some of the programs were used individually and then once we finished them we moved on to other things. Also, I’ve found for us, some programs do work well together and seem to compliment each other. For example, I thought Language Wise worked well with a good overall reading program. For my son, we didn’t need to use it at an intensive level, but what we did use helped with his language skills. In addition, I found that many of the exercises were games we could play while traveling in the car.

I agree that it’s important to carefully choose programs and commit to working on them the recommended duration. The one exception would be if you didn’t feel comfortable with a program. One program I didn’t follow through with was Seeing Stars (at home). I found my son didn’t work well with me on it. He was very sloppy with his air writing, throught the entire thing was ridiculous, and I didn’t feel I was teaching it effectively. I’ve heard it’s not impossible to do at home. Generally I feel very competent working with my son, but this was the one program I felt unsure about.

Laura,

Just curious, did you take the Seeing Stars training first? I’ve had lots of people say you can use V/V without training, but I’d say that the training for me, at least, was invaluable. I am taking Seeing Stars in Nov. and also would not try it without training first.

Janis

My impression of Seeing Stars was that it is much more difficult to do without the training than V/V or OCN , and imo the manuals of both are superior. I think I have read of a few people who have done it without training (not sure if these were parents or not).

I think also there might be a certain age where this would be harder to do with one’s own kid. I don’t know but the air writing (which is much more involved than in OCN) might seem so uncool for a certain age kid and doing it with a parent might make it just all that much harder. I don’t really have any experience with it, just an impression.

—des

My son is 9 and I tried to have him do some air writing for his spelling words and his multiplication tables after I read about the concept here online (we’re not doing the LMB programs at this point…I just thought I’d try that technique with him). He thought it was really stupid and was very sloppy about it…he didn’t take the time to write slowly and concentrate on what he was writing. He was basically writing scribble. I didn’t think I’d get him to do it effectively, so I just dropped it. My kid is impatient in general, so a more patient 9 year old may be more cooperative about it.

Lori

I read some parents and teachers were letting the kid write on a table (this isn’t exactly recommended- as you lose some of the advantages) but it would work as you still get the tactile/kinesthetic benefits, if not the “visual” ones, yes you do “see” something when you write in the air. I think some kids are a bit embarrassed about it, think it’s dumb, etc. If I had such a kid in my tutoring practice, I’d go ahead and let him do it on the table.

She also uses a paper some places and so on where the kid writes on the paper but without a pencil. You can still “see” the letters this way, so you might try this.

Also a LONG time ago I had the kids learn finger spelling (for the deaf). I then had the kids practice spelling words in finger spelling. It was very effective back then, and I have since learned the research supports it. The kids think it cool. So you might do this if the kid was particularly resistant.
Most of the fingerspelling letters look like the real letters. For example “c” is formed by cupping the hand in a “c” shape. I do it to remember phone nos. and names. My tested auditory memory for digits was something like 6 years old. So if it helped me…

—des

Hi Janis,
I didn’t take the training. I’d only planned to work with my son (although I have friends begging me to tutor their kids! ;-)

I’m generally not intimidated about teaching or tutoring in any type of language arts or creative setting, but I did feel uncomfortable with SS. My son is not impatient like Lori’s, but he still balked at doing the exercises with me. Also, It was difficult for me to tell if he was creating a blackboard and letters in his head or relying on auditory memory.

[quote=”Lori”]My son is 9 and I tried to have him do some air writing for his spelling words and his multiplication tables after I read about the concept here online (we’re not doing the LMB programs at this point…I just thought I’d try that technique with him). He thought it was really stupid and was very sloppy about it…he didn’t take the time to write slowly and concentrate on what he was writing. He was basically writing scribble. I didn’t think I’d get him to do it effectively, so I just dropped it. My kid is impatient in general, so a more patient 9 year old may be more cooperative about it.

Lori[/quote]

Try shaving cream on a cutting board or even in the shower. Much more fun!

Please look at this website aplusmath.com

It has flash cards that they can work independently on.

Hope this helps.

A few other ways to practice them are at http://www.resourceroom.net/Math/index.asp — it’s one of the last articles. (THere’s also info about a book with alternatives to the rote path)