Are there any good "learning tools"?

Games generally don’t have the necessary detail and repetition for kids who really need help. Also most games teach capitals, while he should be getting lower-case.

Previously I typed up a long, long, long outline of a method plus homemade materials (very low cast) that I used to teach a very severely LD boy the alphabet. Just email me and ask for my reading outlines, free, no strings attached.
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Most games don’t have the good details, but the Leapster stuff tends to be better than average… that’s just a tendency, though; I don’t know about specifics. (It’s put together by the same folks who did the K-12 curriculum, and they actually put sound educational content at a high priority, *not* “is it flashy enough to look good?”)

I’d see if I could let him play on the neighbors’ to see how he takes to it. It still may not break things down enough for him… but it might.

I verfiied that Leapster teaches both upper and lower case letters and ordered one the other day. I think it’s worth a try and he seemed very interested in it when we saw it. I’ll keep you posted how it goes.

I also ordered several items from Handwriting without Tears, so I’m very hopeful that we’ll be learning our alphabet before long!

I recall from your previous post that your son’s issue with learning alphabet is a memory issue? (i.e. can’t remember/recognize A vs. B vs. C?) Is that correct?

My hunch is that he has some underlying cognitive and possibly physical issues that may be preventing him from learning. I would suggest looking into some inexpensive programs that may help build phonemic awareness and memory. My dd at age 5 we found had a short term memory of a 2-3yr old and you would not expect a 2-3yr old to recognize the alphabet! (can he sing the alphabet song? just can’t recognize the letters isolated?)

We did sound therapy to help break down the cement wall and then used Earobics (www.cogcon.com $60?) and Brainbuilder (brainbuilder.com and advancedbrain.com) to help her increase her memory span and develop phonemic awareness. Interestingly, prior to sound therapy she could not do Earobics (tears) and immediately after sound therapy she breezed through all excersises except Karloon’s Balloons which is a memory span. So we did brainbuilder to target this skill and she mastered Karloon’s Balloons w/ no tears. And in meantime, she learned ALL her letters and sounds and started reading. This was all within a 3month period.

I agree with the Earobics recommendation. It is very inexpensive and a great help to any child before or while learning to read. You actually don’t have to know the letter names to learn to read, but you do have to learn the sounds.

Janis