I think that your argument is very logical brtsqd3. I'd demand a written curriculum, that you must agree to, and they have to meet with you weekly to discuss how they are progressing for one month. I would state that you require this because they have spent fourteen hours working on compound words, which is very off target, and indicates that they need your direct guidance on what they should be doing because the documentation from the teacher is apparently not enough. Consider them to be On Probation.
I'm sorry about coming across so strong, but when I'm paying the big bucks and I get service like what your gotten, I'm willing to roll over them like a steam engine. You pay, you get exactly what you want. They need to dance.
Jessica N39515.9226388889Thank you Jessica. You are excatly right, and I couldn't agree with you more. I think that is a wonderful idea. We are meeting with them on monday, so we'll see what they have to say.The library usually has summer reading programs for kids and sometimes afterschool programs.
My kindergarten ds loves the computer and plays educational computer games. Some online and some like Reader Rabbit for kindergarten.
Vsmile has worked wonders. It had educ. games for math and reading.
Also he loves the vtech word whammer. It goes on the fridge and has magnet alphabet letters to help spell three letter words.
It sounds like the only things we do are "high tech electronics", but we read all of the time and practice sight words and the alphabet.
Have to agree with thesamman, Reader Rabbit is awsome.
we have the vsmile, the word whammer, and he plays on the computer constantly so i know what you mean. i guess i need to do a search and find him some good games. thank you.
at this point i'm willing to do just about anything. if you read my post about got a letter from his school you will see why. thanks everyone for your comments, thoughts, suggestions etc.
I would bet that Sylvan had little experience with such young kids. Most parents deal with it on their own or rely on the school to take care of things. However, I agree that they should have provided individualized tutoring regardless of their lack of experience with a KG student. I wouldn't have been able to keep up with the cost of buying from Scholastic. In KG we were bringing home 40 books every 1-2 weeks. They liked the variety. I would read to them as well as them reading to me. Scholastic was good for buying learn to read books that I couldn't find in the library. mamark39515.4664699074I'd go to whoever manages the place and start demanding my money back because they are suppose to provide and individual curriculum, were provided info from the teacher to do that, and did not do it. Tell the manager that if he/she does not give you the money back you are going on the Internet and "Sharing" your experience over and over and over.
Just do it yourself, or hire a tutor to come to your home.
Thanks Jessica. Yeah we are suppose to have a conference with the owner & the girl who signed him up on monday so we'll see what happens. But in my opinion they havent held up their end at all. The girl tutoring him well one of them said, well normally you wont see any improvement until after 36 hours. I said I don't believe that, I would think after 14 hours he would have 1 thing improved, even if its only adding one letter to his alphabet.
Yeah mamark it does get quite expensive, especially when I have 3 of them wanting books from them :). But there are wonderful ones in there. I've purchased dora, diego and another one that are all phonics so i've been doing those with him, but its hard cause he's not into dora or diego. lol
I have a room in the back of my house that has table where i do all of my scrapbooking. So I figure we will devote that to "our" tutor time. So hopefully behind closed doors he will do better. Thanks everyone.
thank you very much. yeah we've started playing bingo and he loves playing it. i think it's helping him with his numbers some. :) i show him the ball and make him look on his card to see if he has them. he really loves to play it.
I'll have to check into the other things. we have lots and lots and lots of books here, they order books everytime the scholastic book orders come home. he's into thomas, planes, trains, construction, so i even bought him big alphabet puzzles that are thomas. and he's doing really well getting them int he right orders.
they all have library cards, i guess its time to go back :)
I'm sorry. I didn't read your post correctly. I don't recall my kids being that great in writing words from memory at this age and they are both exceptionally good in the language arts. They both are recieving enrichment classes in school in the language arts. My oldest has been diagnosed as twice-exceptional, ADD/Gifted. She was not reading as well as her peers in KG and that is why I decided that it had to be my responsibility to teach her. Her spelling is average despite this gifted classification.The spelling came along better as her reading soared.
Younger dd just didn't enjoy writing in KG so she didn't do that great but now she's an fantastic speller. She did the minimum to get by and got caught shoving incomplete papers in the back of her desk at school. I did teach her to read before KG because she had great interest. She is considered marginal for ADD and hasn't had her a formal educational workup yet but she seems smarter than my oldest.
All I'm saying is that KG is a year of great change. I thought that my oldest was going to be learning disabled and I thought that my youngest was not going to be a writer. By first and second grade many of your worries might disappear. I just concentrated on reading with my kids at home because reading is the most important skill a person can develope. Older dd ended up having a lot of trouble with math facts later on so we used the time waiting for the bus to do a few facts every day.
I'm not telling you not to intervene by any stretch of the imagination but don't fret too much. Just teach him what you can at home without pushing so hard that he resents education. The library is a great source of picture books. I go to the library without the kids and check out about 40 books at a time. They love the variety. Both daughters still love picture books even though they are 9 and almost 12. The vocabulary is not as low as you would expect and they learn about a variety of cultures and subjects.
mamark39515.2255555556I want to agree with mamark. My oldest is a terrible reader. In 7th grade we are still teaching reading (not an easy feat as they dont "teach" reading after 4th grade). She does have ADHD and an LD so not a typical learner. My kindergartner is in a typical class and is learning to read easily. I am DETERMINED to push this as my oldest STRUGGLES every day in every subject because of her poor reading. My point.........is agreeing not to push hard. Just practice, practice, practice. Find those simple picture books (a favorite for us is SPOT). A couple of words a page and easy pictures. Even though my daughter (now 6) can read more challenging things she LOVES these. She is confident and doesnt have to work as hard. We try to read these a few times during the day for practice, then I read more challenging books to her at bedtime and we talk about new vocabulary. We practice sight words for fun. WE make up sill sentences or play sight word Bingo (bought it cheap from Amazon). She's in enjoying it and so am I. Work on the reading, but dont make it work, keep it simple and practice, practice, practice! Reading is HARD for a child with ADHD, they have to focus way too long, if it's even a little difficult, they will give up.You might also check Craigslist for tutors- there's usually a fair amount advertising there.
Diane mentioned sight word bingo- my kids loved this. I actually made my own game. If you do a search for 'make your own bingo' you'll come up with sites that let you generate custom bingo cards for free.
My son loves a game called Math Ball but it can be easily modified to teach almost anything. I wrote numbers on peices of masking tape and stuck them to a bouncy ball (the kind you can get for ). I throw it or bounce it to him and he has to add or multiply whatever numbers are under certain fingers. You could do the same with letters (to practice sounds) or sight words. Then when you want to change it just peel off the tape and replace.
You probably do this already, but play games where you try to think of all the words you can that start with the same letter sound. It's great for in the car or while making dinner. You can do the same with simple rhyming words.
I checked into Sylvan and a couple of other similar programs once. I was fortunate to find an online site where parents posted "reviews" of their experiences. There were a lot that were very positive, but there were also many with very negative stories, enough to make me decide not to pursue those programs any further.
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. I work for Sylvan, so I know exactly the set up you're talking about. Basically the teacher moves from student to student, and when the teaching is finished for the first student they start working on their own while the teacher teaches a whole new lesson to the next student. It is a really effective system, but you're right, I don't think it's right for kids with ADHD. I'm really impressed that the kids without ADHD can concentrate on their work in that environment, actually. Eventually they get used to tuning out everyone else. As for your son, he might have tested better than you expected, and that's why they were teaching him more advanced topics.
Personally I think one-on-one tutoring is better for kids with ADHD. They get the immediate feedback necessary to keep them tuned in. That stated, you can do it yourself, but you have to be really patient. It would also be helpful if you had a specific space where you did the tutoring, so he would know that you weren't "mommy" when you were there, and it was time to get to work. Also, doing it a little bit at a time is definitely the way to go - an hour of concentration is a long time for a child that young. You could start it on your own and see how it goes, and if he's not responding to you I'd try a short term one-on-one tutor.
Best of luck!
Thank you Corrina, I'm not one for badmouthing people I really am not. But this is definitely not something for my son. Those kids seem like nothing more then an assembly line there. She said the br (?) kids actually get more one on one then anyone else, but I don't see how if they are at a table with 3 other kids.
Anyway I'm looking for workbooks to work with him. Here is his problems. Maybe someone here can help me find or suggest some things.
When he does his alphabet he has no problems starting at A. (saying them) But if you start at J he has no clue he's thrown way off. Then when it comes to writing them from memory He knows A B C then he leaves big big spaces I J L ; S T V Z. He knows that there are letters between these but he doesn't remember what goes there.
Then he is struggling with rhyming and letter sounds. I think those are the most important right now.
Can you explain to me why they would start my son on compound words first? She said if she starts with compound words first then after chapter 36 they do site words which are your 1 syllable words. She said its easier for them to learn them then. But my problem is he isn't anywhere near compound words, nobody in his kindergarten class is. They don't even touch them till first grade. So I didn't understand and thats why I said about the foundation of a house and walls LOL bad choice I know, but its what popped into my head when I was typing :).
We currently pay an hour for tutoring from a teacher at another school in our district. Check with the office at your school to see if they have references for teachers looking to do tutoring. You can also check with a local college to see if they have student teachers there looking for a little extra money.
My son does better with the tutor when it comes to writing homework. When he works with me, he waits for me to lead his writing but with the tutor he has to come up with his own thoughts and then she helps him figure out how to get it into comprehensive text.
That being said, 4th grade has been extremely difficult and we are looking at putting him in Score for the summer in addition to the one-on-one tutoring.
I think it is normal not to be able to pick up in the middle of the alphabet and not be able to continue with the remaining letters. I have no idea what is going on with the big spaces that you are talking about.
I taught both my kids to read. I ordered primer books online. It's been a while so I can't recall the names of the books I used. Our library also had a early reader section so that I didn't have to buy everything. Teach him phonics. The books will have rhyming words. A kid with ADHD would be totally frustrated with words with too many syllables. Most kids need some phonics. My oldest daughter needed heavy phonics.
I was trying to give a general idea of how he does when he writes from memory. He leaves big blanks because he knows something goes there, he just can't remember what.
I did speak with the neurology department today and his file is on the doctors desk, so as soon as he reviews it they will call me to set up an appointment. Hopefully it doesn't take to long. In the meantime I'm going to take him back to the quack doctor I guess, because he's almost out of his medicine.
Yeah I figured I'd talk to his teacher and see if she could recommend anyone. Unfortunately at his school they don't offer anything for kindergarten students. So if they are going to fail, they just let them fail or its up to the parents to find them the help they need. They don't offer any type of resource or anything until 1st grade. Which I think is silly. It would stand to make more sense if they offered it in kindergarten to give these poor kids more of a chance to get a good strong start in their education early rather then later. Thanks. I'm gonna definitely look around. You probably can teach him all he needs to know but sometimes it is good to have a third party. My dd is almost twelve. She is average in math but homework with her is just terribly stressful to me because she is sooo emotional and fresh with me. I am angry and disappointed with her constantly if I do the task. She hates how I am with her so our relationship really suffers. She's a great kid most of the time but she really hates math. She is working with the tutors to get through her math homework without being so emotional. It's working. I am able to get dinner started without the drama. Little sister gets more attention. Everything is so much more peaceful. You can do much better. We hire a tutor to come to our house for /hour. He is a retired math teacher. Dd also stays after school and is tutored by a math teacher for 40 minutes and it costs . We found the one that comes to our house through word-of-mouth. Her current math teacher gave us a recommendation for the after school teacher.starting Sylvan and finally getting the help he needed to get back on track and caught up in kindergarten so he has the same opportunity to go to 1st grade as all of his friends.
WHAT A JOKE!!!!!!
First of all, its so dang expensive, but we decided you know what. When you have children it becomes your responsibility no matter what to do best by them. So we agreed to go ahead and give it a shot. We had no other options as the school couldn't accomodate him. So here we are 14 hours into the tutoring program and I'm furious with them.
Every night when I go to pick my son up, hes with older kids. First it started out just 3-5 graders. Then last night it was high school kids doing algebra 1/2. I was furious. So I went in to speak to them today. I spoke with Trent's teacher this morning and she said how long has he gone now? I said I'm not sure 10-12 hours why? She said I retested him and nothing. No change. Except he can count to 20. So then I'm really furious. So I go in and tell them just how upset and disappointed I am about this whole situation. The girl I need to talk to wasn't in cause her kids were sick. So the other lady listened to me and told me she was sorry and she would be more then willing to change around Trent's curriculum to try to cater to what he needs.... Omg isn't that what I'm paying you to do to begin with? So then she proceeds to tell me this entire first 14 hours she has been focused on teaching him "COMPOUND WORDS" Omg are you serious? He needs help on the foundation of a house before you can build the walls... I said he's only on one syllable words, he doesn't need compound words. No wonder he's not learning anything. So I proceed to tell her that his teacher put together a packet of papers to show what he was needed all the work on and they were suppose to incorporate it into their tutoring for him. She goes to get his binder to see what I'm talking about and she proceeds to say, "I've never seen this before?" What???? He's been here 14 hours and you haven't seen this when its right there in his file? So here I've spent 5 on 14 hours of tutoring that was waisted and pointless. Useless is exactly what it was. So I told her I felt it was completely unacceptable and she proceeds to tell me that him working with older kids at a table is actually better for an adhd child then kids his age, because he will be more interested in what they are doing? Ummmm how you figure? If he's working with kids his age on the same things, then wouldn't they be less distracted because they all have the same thing. So I tell her, well I think I just want to pull him out and attempt this on my own, because this is not working for him and I'm waisting my money here. I don't think she liked that much. But at this point I don't care. This is my child, his education and my money. I get the final say. So she tells me to call and talk to the other girl in the morning and let her know my concerns and that i'm not happy etc.
Am I wrong? Would you think a child who on the test the school did for him to test for adhd Trent scored 8 out of 10 for adhd. So, would you think it would be beneficial for him hearing a tutor, tutoring two 15 yr old boys in algebra 1/2, while he's trying to focus on writing his alphabet in the correct order from memory? Maybe I'm crazy. I just think if I'm paying .20 hour and my sons hour is divided by 2 other kids so my son is only getting 20 minutes of the hour for tutoring, its a bit crazy. Who in the heck is worth paying .20 for 20 minutes of work? ???????? Nobody and I mean nobody I know. lol
input? thoughts? suggestions?
brtsqd339513.8840972222