Homeschool World Forum

[yeahbut225]

I am so glad to find this forum. My dd is 6 and we decided to give her an extra year before starting kindergarten not because she was behind academically but because of the "wigglies". I worked very sparsely with her on "Hooked on Phonics" last school year. We have just started Phonics Pathways in conjunction with HOP. She has made it up to a level 4.
Here are my concerns:
1. Mom has ADD but taught myself to read by age 5
2. Daughter has a voracious appetite for looking at books and has a phenomenal imagination/vocabulary but seems to show little interest in wanting to read text.
3. She inverts letter, skips words, loses her place. I just saw a website selling some reading aid and it reallly freaked me out because of 10 abnormal reading behaviors on there she does almost all of them.
4. I am perhaps most disturbed by her memory. I we don't do reading for 2 days say . . . it is like she has never seen the sight words in her life.
If the word is "what" she will guess "see". I am completely confounded.
5. She can do oral dictation wonderfully!

Should I test her or not if I am homeschooling? I am not opposed to meds per se but would consider them only as a last resort.

[Theodore]

I wouldn't be too concerned. Everyone has some amount of dyslexia and concentration problems, and you solve that simply by practicing more. Regarding sight words - children have more and more trouble recognizing sight words as the number of words increases past a few dozen. That's simply not a viable way to teach reading. You need to work entirely on having her read words by sounding them out, even if this means things go a lot more slowly at the start. Once she learns basic phonics, sight recognition will follow.

The human brain is a lot better at remembering patterns than random strings of letters. Without phonics, words are just random.
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[Mark]

In the meantime, you might consider seeing an opthomologist to
check for problems and look into things that help dyslexia issues.

mark
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[Lily]

Have you ever seen Zoophonics? http://www.zoo-phonics.com/ I really think this might be a good fit for your daughter, better than a traditional phonic program. It also uses ASL signs to teach the letters (a right-handed child will only make "d" the correct way, giving an instant visual and very different from 'b') and a whole body approach.

I am more concerned about your daughter guessing at words than about the 'warning signs' (my 8yo still loses his place sometimes reading aloud and skips words in an effort to get to the end quicker). If she is guessing random words then the phonics isn't sticking at all.

Testing her is up to you. Personally, I think that as long as you continue to meet her needs, testing should be put on the back burner. She is who she is, and a diagnosis won't tell you anything different than you already know.
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"The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."
- M. Montessori
Proud non-member of the HSLDA

[kerry1968]

It is very common for kids with ADD to be very smart. Their brain works too fast. My son could read a newspaper in 1st grade and would get in trouble for reading along with the teacher. Kids w/ add and public school are a bad fit.

[Theodore]

The reason bright kids have "ADD" is that nothing in school is interesting enough to hold their attention. They don't really have "ADD", which is really just a made-up label - they're just bored.
_________________
The Farming Game - Software Edition for PC, Mac, Linux
The board game has sold over 350,000 copies worldwide, garnered many awards, is used by over 2,000 schools, and is used extensively by homeschoolers.