The last couple of months have been very thinking-intense for me. I have been researching dyslexia and dysgraphia, trying to find ways to help my boy. We have some things in place finally, and now are trying to learn how to use them.
Our charter school has provided a laptop with Dragon Speech software on it, so Nathan will be able to do his testing orally. This year he also learned to type, so that is an option as well. We have found a couple things online that will read out loud to him and that's been very helpful as well.
But the thing I'm most excited about is the Barton Reading program we've finally gotten. I've known about Barton for awhile now, but I dismissed it because, well, it's old. 30 years maybe? Surely we've learned things about how the brain works since then, right? So we used a brain training therapy for a year (nod to Dianne Craft), and that helped, but not enough. Then I switched to Learning Success Systems, but my boy was burned out on 'exersizes' after a year of Dianne Craft stuff.
So, I finally took a good solid look at Barton. I surfed the website, I talked to a couple Barton tutors, and I finally got my hands on Levels 1 and 2. Nathan is beyond Level 1, but I've been 'practicing' with Leah and Olivia as a learn this new method. Nathan will start Level 2 next week.
Barton is a complete language arts program that builds upon itself, so I can do 30-45 minutes a day of Barton, and drop all spelling, reading, writing and grammar (for now). All that stuff gets added back in as the scholar progresses, but for Nathan, he won't be doing any active reading until he completes Level 4. For now he listens to audio books while following along in the hardcopy book.
So, give us a few months. Through the summer perhaps. And we will see how this works...
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