Homeschooling and my thoughts for 2016

Here we are trying to start 2015 & 

I am already thinking about 2016

Photo Credit | zanebenefits.com

I can't help it though! 

As some of you already know I struggled last year. We struggled in homeschooling and I struggled with  the calling of it. I questioned if I was fit to be a home-educater or not. I thought that there would be more help in the school system and maybe if we could just tag-team...this all could just get better. Yet, it hasn't!

They are VERY unwilling to help--I mean nothing at all for Dyslexia! 

The school offered a tiny reading program which isn't even based on OG approach, or in a way that they will learn and that is it. 

They don't accept the IEP from our children's previous school and reject all Phsycoeducational evaluations that have been done with some of the best dyslexic doctors at UBC. They gave suggestions in these reports to prevent further disabilities and support needed and they laughed at them!

Now my kids are asking me why they aren't like everyone else and how come they don't understand what they do. They ask me why nobody helps them. They are embarrassed and frusterated. I went in to the school and spoke with the Principal and Teacher. I talked with them and they want the children to self-advocate. They want my oldest to do more to learn better and not help him at all when he is already sooooo lost! How would he be able to catch up when he has to do extra work just to somewhat be at the other kids' level and that doesn't include his work at home with the Barton's System. 

Not to mention, all the horrible things they ended up learning the first week of school. Like swear words, bullying, etc. When they came home at the end of the first week, this what not what I was expecting that they would learn in elementary school. Maybe High School, not elementary!  

This last week the teacher embarrassed my oldest with the food he brought ( which was a small bite of chocolate cake. I give this to him for encouragement to keep going in class) and all the students laughed at him. He came home so upset and couldn't focus on his homework. I asked him what happened and for it to come from his teacher, he was devestated.

The school system has definitely failed us.

Photo Credit | parentscountry.com

We looked at maybe some programs through our province ( we are in Canada) there was nothing besides the ones previously offered with our phsycoeducational evaluation that they refuted. Besides that nothing, unless serious and prolonged problems ( which I though this is, but obviously not within their records) they offer things for Autism and Down syndrome etc, not Dyslexia. It doesn't fit their program priority or funding criteria. 

They are now begging me to go back to homeschooling. 

And I don't blame them. I want them to come back. But, I also believe in finishing what you started and not running away from your problems. So, they will have to finish their year. Hence why I am looking at 2016. They also will have to ask themselves many questions:

The reason why I stopped homeschooling was because they stopped wanting to learn and listening to my instructions. If I start it up again, I need to have full confidence that they will adhere to me, the curriculum ( if we get some), and what they have to learn. I also have to look at how and what Homeschooling will look like for us in the next year to come. Maybe some may want to stay in school and others Homeschool. What will our schedule look like then? Etc.

There is a lot to think about for no and I will do my best to keep you updated. So if you are subscribed, watch your inboxes for our decision and the next steps we will be taking.

How was your homeschooling year?
What was your struggles and what have you learned from them?

In the mean time,

Happy Learning!

...don't forget to Subscribe, so you can get the latest here on The Dyslexic Home Schooler!

A Day in the life of: Beginning Bible Time & Calendar Time

 We try and start our day together with the Bible...right now we are in the book of Ruth using the Elgermeirier's Bible Story Book. We follow along the stories and discuss each story afterwards.

After Bible reading time, we try and memorize our scripture verse for the week...if we have struggled with the verse, I will  bring it up again. Then we rotate and add another scripture verse. Sometimes I will gear a scripture verse based on a Character that my children might need help on. This one is geared towards encouraging ourselves in the Lord...I will often link this to another story in the Bible. eg. David who also encouraged himself in the LOrd! These are the most important parts of our day.

Home schooling has given me the opportunity, to instil the Word of God in my children's hearts. I may fail them in areas...but God will not. Also, I want them to build relationships with God and learn all they can about Him. I want them to know how to pray and discipline themselves in reading God's Word. I want to build in them, Godly character through the best resource which is His Holy Word! Homeschooling gives me the blessings to do so. This is invaluable to me.

Sometimes I find it difficult to nurture these aspects, especially now that I have changed the structure of our days. Before we would all sit down for school and start with Bible reading and memory verse. Then all do math, then all do whatever the other subjects were. But what I found was, if one had an attitude towards school (at this time it was our oldest who we made to read and write up to the standard of everyone else and kicked and screamed through it all...now we scribe and read for him 100% of the time, now it is down to 80%) this would cause a break in the attention of the others or a similar battle with the others. Plus, they are all in different grades, with different outcomes! Then, if I forgot something they all were sitting waiting and I lost their attention.

Now, I have separated them...this I find to be harder in meeting PLO's, especially if one of them is having a bad day. Because they are rotated, if I am taking too much time with one, the other lacks that time with me. I am working on a better system eventually, but for now we make due. Also, here in Canada, PLO's are serious business!! We really feel the pressure to meet every one. Unless you are unschooled or just Registered, or are enrolled in a school that is more lenient, PLO's is required to be met and your over-seeing Teacher is there to encourage, remind, help and assist you in achieving them. In many ways this can be good in helping you set goals and know they are meeting their grade level acheivements. However, many times it can be discouraging if you are learning very valuable lessons that are not intended for their year. For example, last year and this year, my son is following the war of 1812. He could describe, act and be informative on the details of this war. Now he builds T.P's in the back yard using real wood. He analyses what works best and applies it. He looks at the material and noticed what is better or worse for the environment to make a better shelter. I can think of so many outcomes for this...but if it's not in the PLO's of their grade level ( although it is good learning) it most likely wont be applied to their outcomes and the traction is lost for meeting those required expectations. Now that I have vented a little LOL...we can continue...

For the little ones I will Begin our day with the Calendar

This is an awesome, awesome resource! The only complaint is that it doesn't have a lot of Canadian cards...but they have blank ones that we use for them...they are just not as pretty :D
This is great for weather, number counting, days of the week, months of the year and lots more. On the reverse I have an Alphabet Chart which I use a lot too. It is nice to have the letters there when they need them. For our Dyslexic learner, it is a very good visual for numbers and letters when writing and he gets lost. It is also nice to have the date always present for our journals or whatever writing we have.

So that is the wrap up of what we use for our Bible and Calendar time...stay tuned for more resource reviews and ideas for your Homeschooling!


Don't forget to Subscribe to my Posts and write a comment! I would love to hear what you use too, so don't be shy!

Learning with The Barton System

Susan Barton is an incredible women who has truly hit the mark. 

I sincerely feel the care of what she is doing throughout here videos 

& the scientific research that was put into this System. 

What I like most about this System, is that it is simple and there are no letters on the blocks. Why this is important, I never realized, until we came to our first hiccup doing a lesson.  My son was getting frustrated with the simplicity of the lesson. For example I would say a non-sense short word. (VC-Vowel Consonant), he would repeat back each sound in that word, say it together following our signs and then tap each sound on two different coloured tiles to represent the two different sounds. He thought this was pretty silly because he knew what it said and could tell there was two different letters in it. So he would slur the sounds together while tapping the blocks and then try to push the lesson along.

In my heart, I felt that it was a bit too simple as well. However, I sat there and thought to myself, what was really happening?! He quickly blended the words together and didn't realize that the sounds were separate, even though he could distinguish the letters to be separate. I asked him to do it again, and with some nagging he agreed. That is where I noticed this to be true. I told him to purpose himself  to slow down. This made him concentrate on the individual sounds even more and he was even shocked that it was hard to break apart those isolated sounds just using his ears. This became even more apparent when we went into the harder activities. We are at Lesson 2 now for Level 1 Phonemic Awareness.

Just recently Our Dyslexic boy read me a whole small book. Then another one and this morning he was actually excited to get a book and read. What he wants for Christmas...a bible with large letters that he can read on his own. What an incredible break through for this family!

Larger letters is much easier to read, even for me (I also have Dyslexia). In a future post I will give my thoughts on Irlene Syndrome too. But for now, this is working incredibly for our family.

Susan Barton

For those of you who are new to teaching your Dyslexic children or who have not heard of Susan Barton, I encourage you to take the time out and listen to her many videos. I found them to be personally an incredible amount of reliable information and understanding for what I was going through. I often cried with tears of joy afterwards, just knowing that things that I had gone through as a child was something that others had faced too. I also left quite shocked with facts that I thought everyone thought. For example, I see most things in a 3D sense of view. When I turned to my husband and asked, "If I said, 'An apple falling from a tree.' Do you see it actually falling from a tree?"
His reply was simply, "No" and that it would be hard for him to consciously make that image in his mind. I was really shocked by that.

Didn't everybody think and see things in their mind like I did? Doesn't everybody's stories jump into movie-action for them? And well, that is mostly true for all of Dyslexics from minimum to extreme, I was shocked that I was different in that sense.

We have set out and purchased the Barton's System, which is an Orton Gillingham based education, that encourages the student in Phonemic Awareness. Reading abilities are strengthened and taught in a very different way compared to just learning their phonetics...which can be very helpful for Dyslexic's.

When we started our Homeschooling and had no idea about Dyslexia, we started our Language Arts with Sing Spell Read and Write. This is an excellent Curriculum that I still use today coupled with many others for richness.  However, with Dyslexic learning often times, it is their auditory input that makes it harder for them to become a fluent reader. They tend to rely more on image and I know this to be true for me and our family. I will often mix up similar looking words while doing our Reading Aloud Time, because I have relied on image rather than reading through phonetics and have very poor phonemic awareness. Phonics based teaching will not help on its own. I have noticed this to be true with our children. They get phonics when we are doing the sounds. When we start to blend they kind of get it (even with repeated practice on each sound and slowly blending a consonant with a vowel etc.) But then try and do a Consonant, Vowel, Consonant (or CVC word) they don't want to sound-out, they resort back to image memory. They struggle and don't want to go that route in the neurological sense. ***Disclaimer, I don't know how many times I have had to use the spell check, just in this paragraph alone!**

Just a note though: On Susan Barton's website, if you are planning to use her system you should first do the Teacher or Tutor Test and the Student Test. The actual tests do not take a long time. But you do need patience to get through her videos. I would not recommend skipping any instructional videos if they are required. They have been very fruitful for us and I am so glad we did not skip over these things due to impatience, which was easily encountered! P.S. I almost failed the Tutor Test, so don't feel bad if you do, she gives other options for those of you that might struggle with the test.

So, this has been our first week using the Barton System and it has been awesome. I can not stress enough the use of her video's. Please watch them carefully and do the instructions just as she intended them. That way the student and you have full confidence going in. Also, practice the sounds she does on your own. Using Sing Spell Read and Write gave me a great advantage to the part in her videos about how to pronounce letters properly, but I still messed up. So practice them as intended.

Once I was set up it was easy. Everything came in the box and so that made it very helpful. The blocks do not have any letters just colours. I have to tell you this actually works. I can feel my brain working in different areas....it will be different for you too if you area also Dyslexic like I am. I will keep you updated on how we are doing using the System.

If you need any information or just want to hear her videos explaining what Dyslexia is and the signs associated with it etc. You can take a look on her website at: http://www.dys-add.com/