Second guessing a purchase-please advise

Wow, what you just described sounds like you’d be a sure on hit for Dianne Craft.  I just got two of her books and am just starting to read them based on rave reviews of friends and strangers in our local homeschool community.  As I was speaking with our pediatrician today, she gave me the go ahead to pursue Dianne’s materials and thought they were great.  http://www.diannecraft.org/  I’d take a peak and see if you might be able to use her techniques for spelling and helping your ds.

Rebekah

We liked the Natrual Speller, low key…low stress.

JFG

I don’t know anything about Simply Spelling, so I can’t give any input on that.  We use Sequential Spelling.  My son, who is now 10, also just can’t spell anything.  Well, he’s doing better now, but about 2 years ago, he really couldn’t spell anything.  He was also an early reader, still loves to read well above his grade level, but the child just can’t spell.  I won’t say that Sequential Spelling has been a magic bullet or anything like that, but it has helped him a great deal.  It has taught him to actually think about a word, the root of it, put down what he already knows how to spell and then add to that.  For instance…   if he needs to spell misunderstand, he would start with under, then add the stand, then add the mis.  That is basically the way the lessons are taught.  The writing consists of 25 words per day.  It takes us about five minutes.  (He also hates the act of writing.)  There is no prep time whatsoever for me… just open up the book to that day’s word list and go.  

You can see samples here.  http://avko.org/sequentialspelling.html   You do not need the student response book.  

I did previously own Spelling Power and I think it’s a great program, but was not what we needed.

Karen,  If you visit Dianne Craft’s website it goes into some details about the right brained child – if you PM me your email address I can forward you an email that they sent me with a bunch of free attachments. 

I think perhaps the best place for you to start is with the Brain Integration Therapy Manual.  I WOULD hold off on spelling because it sounds like right now there are much more basic/foundational areas that your son needs help with.  If he is truly “right-brained” then even if you make him write words over and over again, he’s still not going to be able to spell them correctly.  There’s a disconnect between right brain and left brain that keeps him from being able to store things in his long term memory. 

Yes, her manual is expensive.  I was able to find it locally used, as well as having several people offer to let me see their copy prior to purchasing – do you have a local homeschool email list that you can inquire to see if anyone has it?  Personally, $60 still isn’t much if it DOES actually work to helps my child with speech, writing, and spelling.  But I would make these foundational issues a top priority over spelling… especially since by CM standards he’s still on the young side for even beginning spelling.

Rebekah

If it doesn’t cost anything to cancel it, I would… You can always repurchase it once your son is more ready to start spelling.

I am not sure that I am adding much help and may sound confusing, but fwiw, I’ll comment on two things:

Spelling Power: We have this – I found a used copy for cheap and don’t do all the activities. We do really just spend about 5 min a day on this and I don’t have to plan a thing. We go over the rule (my son does write it) and then work our way down the list – just spelling, nothing else. I like that it is so straight forward and not a lot of bells and whistles and extra writing – we do enough writing with other things. One thing I like to do sometimes with spelling if it seems like the writing side is overwhelming is to use foam letters (I have a set of Lauri ones) to spell with instead of writing. Sorta makes it more fun

Speech: I have twin boys who have a whole boatload of speech issues. We did have our friend who is a speech therapist evaluate them and help me have a sort of game plan with them. I bought a lot of speech books, cds, etc. to use with them and here has been our experience – it was just one more thing to plan and we didn’t do it. I still like to read through the books with them and listen to the cds, but what has really worked best, and what our friend/speech therapist has said, was to be PATIENT (not my strongest virtue) and work with one thing at a time, usually it is a sound they discover themselves that they want to work on. Last year at their annual checkup the ped. said we needed to address the speech issues (I agreed) – for the most part over the past year we have been very laid back, no pressure (because that just frustrates everyone), and haphazardly gone at it when we recognize it. We get really excited when we accomplish a new sound. We have all been less stressed, and this year at their appt, he didn’t even mention speech – I asked him what he thought and he said he thought they had improved alot, and many of our friends have said the same. I think on this issue in particular for us, being very gentle, patient, waiting on their cues of readiness (even if they didn’t seem to go along with the “appropriate age” for being able to do whatever skill), has been the best approach – same goes for reading with these two.

And I don’t know if the same would transfer over to spelling with your son, but with my boys, not being able to articulate certain sounds doesn’t seem to get in the way of them sounding out words and being able to spell some. They can’t make the “R” sound to save their lives (it is WAY down on our list right now) but when they are sounding out words with “r” they just make their “r” sound and move on. They know what it is supposed to sound like by hearing everyone else pronounce it correctly, it is just that they can’t pronounce it correctly. So, I don’t know, it could be that the speech may not get in the way of being able to learn to spell correctly so long as he can hear it pronounced correctly. I have found too, that with my boys, working on reading and sounding out words has actually helped their speech in causing them to concentrate on individual sounds more.