6 Months Later...

My last post was in April. Yikes. Life in general is just...up to my eyeballs.

So, we have been doing Barton with Nathan for just about 6 months.  He is Level 4 now, which I am told is the hardest because there are just so many spelling rules to learn/remember/understand.  He seems to be doing fine with the tutoring. He learns the spelling rules pretty quickly, although we sometimes argue over just exactly where a syllable break should be. Of if a word ends with en or in (he insisted that 'kitten' should be spelled 'kittin' because that's how most people say it). Seriously, we debated this point for nearly 10 minutes. In the end, I had to demand that he do it my way. Sigh...

After a lovely talk with Susan Barton (herself!!), I decided to use Barton as the language arts program in our homeschool. So I started Barton with Leah and Olivia as well. And quickly realized that Leah is also dyslexic. Of course, her version looks very different from Nathan's. Her brain inserts or deletes letters in words, and she is not aware of it. I think her version is harder to tutor. How do you help someone who is not aware of making a mistake?

As for Olivia, I'm just not sure yet.  She is halfway through Level 3, and seems to actually enjoy learning.  But at 7 1/2, she's still sounding out 3 letter words. Is this just her personal style (slow), or a symptom of a greater problem?  We'll keep watching.

All in all, I'm happy with Barton. I've learned a ton of why words are spelled the way they are. Anybody out there know why the /k/ sound in the word 'chicken' is spelled with a ck and not a c or a k? There's actually a rule for that...who knew?

I'm told that after Level 4, kids are able to read with better fluency, and are encouraged to read independently. I figure we should get through Level 4 by mid-Nov.