Just wondering what other parents are doing this summer

I’ve always done “homeschooling” during the summer with my kids. Learning doesn’t stop just because the school system says it should. Fun reading activities, computer reading programs, etc. We found that activities with lots of movement helped a lot.

This summer my dd is going to work on her algebra skills, learn chemistry and physics, read fun books and work on German Vocabulary. LOL (She’s 15.)

Hi Gina

My 8 yr. old just recently finished 16 weeks of vision therapy and we are playing catch-up on reading skills using an online reading program (www.clicknread.com)
It’s inexpensive compared to other programs. (Unique reader or Time$ Learning) The downside is, your child has to work through the boring easy, pre-primer level stuff ‘til you find a challenging level, and the format is the same for every lesson, just with increasing difficulty.

FYI…If your child has been officially diagnosed with a learning disability or dyslexia I highly recommend finding a behavioral optometrist that specializes in pediatric vision therapy and have your child examined for other vision problems. Sometimes the eyes don’t work together correctly. Much to my surprise, a typical optometrist fitting a child for glasses wouldn’t pick up on these problems.

Other than that, swimming lessons, VBS, camping with family next week, church camp the week after. Possibly a week with grandparents….that remains to be decided.

Hope you find some peace and quiet while keeping your family happy and busy.

Frazzledmom in eastern WA

I have been reading a lot lately that Dyslexia is a language problem, so maybe you could find a good speech/language pathologist to work with over the summer. Or some kind of an educational therapist? My 8 yr old has a language processing disorder, and we are working with the SLP 3x/week and doing the assigned homework on the other days. She is a year behind in reading, so we try to stay focused on that in additon to any other language based activities. If you go to www.linguisystems.com there are some fairly inexpensive games that you can get. We got 2 of the “quick play folder games” which help with language, but you could do a seearch on dyslexia on their site.

Otherwise we’re doing a lot of fun activities such as dance classes, camps, camping with friends 2 weekends, a visit to the grandparents and as many beach days as we can fit in. Also, my 5 yr old is in a summer program at his preschool (before heading off to kindergarten) which gives me time with the 8 yr old to work on the language assignments. My 10 yr old entertains herself quietly (THANK GOODNESS) during that time.

Kathryn

Ok, I’m trying to figure out how to reply to each person. Is that possible? I didn’t see a reply button at the end of each person’s comment.

Until I can figure it out, I’ll post a general reply. Thanks for your comments. I’m going to enjoy it here, I can tell that already. Lilah and I are doing a borrowed reading program (shhh, lol) from the school. It is called Formula Three. She made **a lot** of progress with it in the six months or so they did it at school. So we’re continuing the program at home this summer. It has a workbook and tapes. She does 1-3 lessons of it per day. Of course she also reads a book or a chapter of a book to me. Then I’ve set up centers (her choice of activities in a variety of subjects, some of it is is hands-on) for her that we do at least a few times a week. Mostly she has trouble with reading so that is our focus but I don’t want her to fall behind in math either. And she still needs practice with writing and other language activities so those things are included in center time too).

Last year we did Hooked on Phonics and it helped her a lot. I think the program we are doing now is better though because it gives the child a complete method for attacking the word.

She’s also going to camp through our church, taking swimming lessons, going on vacation with all of us, going to VBS. I should call to see if I can get her signed up for bowling too.

I’m going to check out the resources you all mentioned. If anyone has more ideas, please post them.

Oh, she will be tested for visual problems too where objects float and such. We are going out of town for that visit.

Thanks,
Gina (mom to Lilah (8), Will (6), and Cora (2.5)

Hi Gina,

3 years ago I was in a similar situation as you. My 8 year old son was finishing 2nd grade and reading at a kindergarten level. Despite having an excellent 2nd grade teacher and excellent resource teacher, he still was making little progress in reading.

I did take him to the optometrist at the recommendation of an educational therapist. She said he had a tracking problem, and we did vision therapy using the HTS system on our computer. This did help; he was not so fatigued when he read. But that was not the only problem.

So I started Barton Reading with him, which is a multisensory reading and spelling system based on the Orton-Gillingham method. After he graduated from Barton Reading, we did REWARDS, which is actually a good program for the summer, once your child is reading at about the 4th grade level. I am happy to report that now he is going into 6th grade and reading at grade level. He is still a slow reader but has good comprehension. We are using Great Leaps to get his fluency rate up.

I decided to tutor him myself, because I felt he needed so much support that I could not afford to pay someone else to tutor him. I know not all parents are able to tutor their own kids, but if you can, I recommend an Orton-Gillingham based reading system. Barton Reading is expensive, but it was cheaper than paying a tutor. I chose it because it was scripted and came with training on video. There are other good Orton-Gillingham based programs that are cheaper, but I can’t think of any names off hand.

This summer we are working, but not so hard. I have him doing a bunch of things that takes 10 - 15 minutes each. Great Leaps for fluency. Spelling through Morphographs for Spelling. Quarter Mile Math to drill in math facts (he has problems memorizing things as well), Type to Learn for typing, and Handwriting without Tears, because he has not learned cursive. I know it sounds like a lot, but we only spend an hour a day and Type to Learn and Quarter Mile Math are actually fun for him.

Also, I agree that Linguisystems has a lot of good books. I also recommend reading Parenting a Struggling Reader by Hall & Moats. Also, Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz is good. Good luck!

Well..
we took our children camping.[we have 3] We had books and the local library had a read and return section for people who were just visiting for the summmer.

And of course we had to continue to advocate and negotiate with the school via E-mail.This advocating for your children really takes a lot of time. We couldn’t let the school just relax and forget about our children’s education just because it was summer break.

We think we really made a lot of progress with school district this summer. :-}

[Modified by: speaker wire on August 14, 2007 12:24 PM]