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Mid-Summer Training Call

I have had so many calls from parents recently, wondering how to help their child between now and when school starts back up. They realize it’s not too late to give their child a boost, but they also want to be sure they have an enjoyable rest of the summer. So, I decided to have a teleseminar where I will present information on summer activities to help your child’s skills improve as well as activities rich in experiences and family time.

I’m hosting a FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday July 14th at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific. Upon registering you will receive a FREE Handbook on the 5 things you can do to help your child over the summer. Those that attend live will receive a surprise FREE gift.

Searching for Mid-Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Skills and Still Have Fun?
FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday June 2nd at at 8 pm EST, 7 pm CST, 6 pm MST, and 5 pm PST.
Space is limited. You can attend via phone or via internet!

Reserve your Teleseminar line now at:
Title: Mid-Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Skills and Still Have Fun
Time: Wednesday, July 14th at 5:00pm Pacific
Listening method: Phone + Web Simulcast

To attend, visit:
Mid-Summer Training Call
LD Specialist and Board Certified Educational Therapist Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., is answering your questions about summer activities to help your child improve their skills. The teleseminar will be recorded; if you can’t attend, you’ll be able to listen later. Plus special surprise bonus just for registering! Those that attend live will receive another surprise FREE gift.

Mid-Summer Training Call

Join Bonnie Terry’s call and find out what you can do in just 20 minutes a day to boost your child’s reading, writing, and math skills and have fun at the same time.

I’m hosting a FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday July 14th at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific. Upon registering you will receive a FREE Handbook on the 5 steps you can take to help your child over the summer even if they have a learning problem, LD, dyslexia. The activities and steps are for all age students – kindergarten through adults.

Those that attend the Live Teleseminar will also receive a surprise FREE gift. And, of course, if you can’t make it live on the call, you will get access to the recording!

Mid-Summer Training Call
FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday July 14th at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific.
Space is limited. You can attend via phone or via internet!

Reserve your space for the Teleseminar now at:

Title: Searching for Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Learning Skills and Still Have Fun?
Time: Wednesday, July 14th at 5pm Pacific, 6 pm Mountain, 7 pm Central, 8 pm Eastern.
Listening method: Phone + Web Simulcast

To register, visit:
Mid-Summer Training Call

Learn About:
1. How to improve your child’s reading, writing, and math skills in just 20 minutes a day
2. 5 steps you can take to help your child
3. Activities to do at home, in the yard, or in your neighborhood

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

This review is difficult for me to write because this product had such a dramatic and positive effect for one of our children.  It has been an answer to prayer, a break-through for our child who has struggled with auditory comprehension for years.  I am grateful for the opportunity to use this product that we would not have otherwise had access to,  thankful for God’s sovereignty that our family was chosen for this review and that the vendor determined to send us this particular product (as part of the TOS Bloggers Program).

So as you read this review realize that I’m not unbiased, know that I’m indebted to this product for helping my child in a way that I had failed to help him on my own and take from it what you will.

Bonnie Terry Learning focuses on products for the struggling learner.  The goal is to enable you to be better equipped to develop strong reading, writing and math skills in your child with dyslexia, ADD, Autism or other general learning difficulties.  Even gifted children can struggle in some of these areas and Bonnie Terry aims at smoothing out those bumps in the road of education.  They try to help you “think outside the box” to address your child’s difficulties from an angle, direction or perspective that you may not have considered, a direction that may be the difference between success or struggle for your child.  Bonnie Terry offers a variety of games and products to improve reading, writing, math and study skills for children 7 years and older.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent our family The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap ($67).  Rocket Rap is geared for 1st  grade through adult to help develop and strengthen reading or listening comprehension.  The game comes with 3 sets of cards written at different reading/listening levels (2nd-3rd grade, 4th-6th grade and 7th-12th grade).  Each set of cards can be used in several different ways.  Children can find the factual information, the main point or work on sequencing.  Children are able to read the cards themselves or may listen as you read to them in order to work on either reading or listening comprehension.  This versatility makes it easy to play the game with children at multiple reading/listening levels at the same time.  The cards are self-correcting and include hints to help your child succeed and even allow for using a helper in the scoring.

The Rocket Rap game consists of a high-quality, over-sized vinyl game mat, 3 sets of cards, four playing pieces and a die.  Play progresses by the child reading or listening to the paragraph on the card.  Then they complete their task depending on their level.  Beginners name two facts from the card, intermediates relay the main point of the paragraph AND two facts and advanced students use several cards at a time and put them in the proper chronological order.  Each time the child completes their task they get to roll the die and move.  If they need to use one of the helpers you take one point off of their roll.

All of our children from 1st grade up were able to play together, which as you know is an important feature for our family.  Our older children (10, 11 and 13) were able to easily complete the comprehension activities on all levels of cards, but enjoyed working on the sequencing.  Our 9 year old was happy to play with the 7th-12th grade cards.   The game was interesting enough to the kids that they wanted to play multiple times, even when some of the novelty had worn off.

Pros:

* multi-level play

* nice, high quality game

* lots of fun facts about people and planets included on the cards

* improves focus on the task at hand

* gives older children an opportunity to read out loud

* ability to focus on several different aspects of comprehension

Cons:

* price

* there should be more cards (in my opinion)

* not a fast-paced, edge of your seat type of game, but our children all enjoyed playing it, so what can I say?

What Rocket Rap did for our child:

The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap had amazing results for one of our children.   We have been working with him on comprehension for years.  I often have him draw pictures of what I’m reading, we act things out and we read just a few phrases at a time and ask him questions whenever we are dealing with auditory learning.  He simply struggles in this area.  I was interested to see how he would do with Rocket Rap.

I began with the easiest level.  I read the card to him and he was to tell me 2 facts from the card.  When it was time for him to answer all I got was a blank stare.  When prompted with the helpers, he was still unable to answer.  I was honestly shocked that he could not do this.  The cards we were using only have 3-5 sentences, are chock full of facts and he couldn’t pick out one.  I ended up modifying the game for him, rather than have him tell me two facts per card to earn one roll of the die, I gave him one roll of the die for each fact he could pick out and we used lots of helpers.  He was still unable to finish the game.

We began playing Rocket Rap more often.  The improvement was rapid and dramatic!  By the end of the next game he was able to play without my previous modifications and currently it is easy enough for him to pick out facts while listening that he likes to try reading the card himself.

For the first time in his life our child will raise his hand when Mark asks questions during family worship and he will know the answer.  He will come up to us after church and spontaneously tell us something that he learned from the sermon.  He is so amazingly proud of himself and I’m amazingly thankful.

Final thoughts:

As I mentioned this is a tough review.  For 8 of our children this game would be a fun, helpful activity that is not worth $67, but for one child, for these results, I would happily pay double.  We’ve tried things similar to this in the past, we’ve been focused on this problem for years, but Rocket Rap has been the first activity that has been successful.

If you have a child who struggles with reading or listening comprehension, I certainly think that Bonnie Terry’s The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap is worth a look.  If any of you decide to go this route, I’d love to hear what you think.  Have our results been typical?

You may read more reviews of Rocket Rap and other Bonnie Terry Learning products at The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew blog.  You may read more of my homeschool curriculum reviews on my review page.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap to our family free of charge (part of the TOS Bloggers Program) to enable me to write this review.  All opinions expressed are my own and I am not otherwise reimbursed for any reviews here on Raising Olives.

I do have an IEP meeting scheduled in a few weeks so it will be ready to be implemented when he starts 1st grade. What kinds of things should I have in his IEP so that he is taught visually? Is there anything I should ask about? He is already getting speech and language help one day a week at school, but his diagnosis has changed from delay to disability since that was implemented.

In one word, yes, a language disability is considered a learning disability.

The National Center for Learning Disabilities states the following:

Specific Learning Disability: A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include a learning problem that is primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

Disability categories: IDEA disability categories include autism, deaf-blindness, deafness, emotional disturbance, hearing impairment, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, other health impairment (e.g., asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia and Tourette syndrome), specific learning disability, (e.g., Perceptual Disabilities, Brain Injury, Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Dyslexia, Developmental Aphasia), speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury, visual impairment (including blindness), and developmental delay.

There are a few other things I’d like to share with you.

1. In CA there are services for those with severe speech &/or language disabilities. Kids are typically placed in a classroom where the teacher has a background speech & language [typically a speech & language pathologist].

Placement in a class that is specifically designed for speech & language students where I live are actually county classes – in other words, the county office of education has classes sprinkled throughout several public schools and they bus the kids to the specific school that has the program/class they need. These classes are for those with more severe language problems than one or two sessions per week with the speech person in a pull out program would be providing.

“Language is often described in two ways: expressive language and receptive language. Individuals with LD often have difficulty with both expressive and receptive language. There is a strong relationship between language and learning disabilities. Articles within this section provide information for parents and teachers about early warning signs of speech and language difficulties.” [LD Online]

2. Even if you send your child to a private school, if you want, you can access speech & language services from the public school. You will need to transport your child at the time of day the public school schedules him, but the public school should be providing it.

I was in a similar circumstance a number of years ago. One of my students was in a private school and I attended the IEP meeting at the public school. The parents kept the student at the private school but were able to transport him to the public school for resource services provided by the public school.

3. Regarding the IEP, you will want to come as prepared as possible. You might ask your son’s current teacher for any special things he/she is doing for your son. You will want to also make notes yourself on how he works best at home. To get a fuller picture of what is going on, you may want to avail yourself of an informal comprehensive assessment tool like the Learning Difficulty/Disability Pre-Screening Tool and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool. It will give you a lot of information so you will be coming from a position of knowledge and strength to the meeting.

Hope this is helpful.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

A question came in today regarding auditory processing problems…

My 8 year old daughter just got diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, mild dyslexia, attention issues, and eye teaming issues.  She is on a beginning 2nd grade reading level and a post 1st grade math level.  She is currently doing interactive metronome and then will start Ken Gibson’s Pace Program.  She is also starting a computerized home vision therapy program.  I have always home schooled her and her older sister (who has no issues).  Also, I will be starting moving with math by math teachers press as soon as it arrives.

I guess my question is what else can  I do with her this school year as far as curriculum?   Are there any other training programs you can suggest?  And what about her future…can we overcome this?

Thanks so much, April

Yes, auditory processing can be improved. Remember, most of these areas of perception are learned which means they can be improved.

I will be posting another article in the next few days with more auditory processing activities.  Additionally, the spelling program Making Spelling Sense addresses & improves auditory processing skills with the specific method used in the book. The book was designed specifically to work on auditory processing at the same time it teaches spelling. That way you work on a specific skill and at the same time address the underlying causes of most spelling problems – which are related to auditory processing.

A good computerized program for addressing auditory processing skills is Earobics.

Here are a variety of posts that relate to auditory process in one fashion or another. The March 26th, January 12th, and January 7th posts should prove to be very helpful to you.

Teaching Reading: The Short Vowels to Dyslexics, ADHD, & Homeschooling Kids Aug 3rd

Spelling Problems? What is the Cause and What Do I Do About Them? June 4th

My son has Speech Problems, What do I do? May 30th

My son is 8 and has really struggled with learning. What do I do? Where should I start? May 27th

How to Improve Reading in 5 Minutes a Day May 20th

Is a Language Disability Considered a Learning Disability? May 1st

Why Should I Do an Informal Assessment of My Child? April 8th

Question about The Comprehension Zone Game March 30th

Feeding Your Auditory and Visual Processing Systems March 26th

Questions regarding the LD Screening Tool March 25th

Will Music Really Help Improve Reading Skills? March 18th

New study links Dyslexia to slower processing of sounds in the brain March 16th

What Do I Do? I Know There Is a Problem & the School Says No Feb 11th

My 13 yr Old Wants To Just Read and Not Write, How Can I Help? Jan 27th

Homework Help for Children With Learning Disabilities Jan 26th

18 Auditory Processing Activities You Can Do Without Spending a Dime! Jan 12th

My son was just diagnosed with CAPD. How can I help him? Jan 7th

Reading Problems, Dyslexia, Difficulties, or Deficits and Rapid Naming, What is the Connection? May 23rd (2008)

Reading Problems, Dyslexia, Difficulties, or Deficits and Rapid Naming, What is the Connection? May 21st (2008)

I hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

They, along with homeschool moms nationwide, struggle to homeschool children with speech difficulties. Although speech therapy is an option, they wanted to know what else they could do at home, in the homeschool, to engage their children and aid them with their speech difficulties.

Dear Elaine and Kim,

I have 2 instances where speech is involved and what I did, plus a few more thoughts.

1. When my middle child was 2 (he’s now 28), he didn’t talk or respond to us unless we were looking him in the face–I could ask if he’d want to go for a walk or if he’d want a cookie and unless I pointed, he didn’t respond. What I did was force the issue, once I knew he could hear me (We had his hearing tested first). Then I required that he respond in sentences, 2-3 words at first and then gradually longer sentences in order to get the cookie or whatever the thing was that we were doing. Sometimes I had to hold his face so he was looking me in the eyes, and I’d have to push the point. “You won’t get _____ until you ask me for it.” It wasn’t a ‘mean’ thing, just a firm insistence that he respond with longer sentences.

2. When I was teaching a primary-age class about 33 years ago, I had a student that very rarely spoke and when she did, you could barely hear her. She barely spoke above a whisper. We did lots of activities to try to engage her voice. One day, we did an activity with an old refrigerator box where she was inside it with another student, and we pretended it was a train. I moved it from the outside, shaking it and talking about where it was going. All of a sudden, there were strange noises coming out of the box. She had ‘found’ her voice and was laughing. We had never heard her before. After that, she started using her voice.

3. Provide activities where there is ample opportunity to respond in songs, sounds, rhymes, or laughter.

4. The counties often have programs that are free for those preschoolers with speech problems. At least where I live they do. You might call your county office of education to find out.

5. I may be wrong, but IDEA states that a student with speech and language difficulties does qualify for services. You should be able to get services from the public school system even if you are not attending the public school. You will have to do the transporting to and from for the services, but he should be able to get them. That being said, being lovingly firm, expecting more as well as accepting that they may never talk too much, and being fine with that is something that you can do. Remember, our kids rise to our expectations, so aim high.

6. Get a better understanding of your child’s learning problems.

Hope this is helpful,

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET