I arrived on brillkids website while searching for much needed help for my 9 year old son. I was shocked at what I saw and have already fallen in love with BrillBaby and Kids.
My 9 year old is struggling with reading and his entire school career is being affected so much that we have just pulled him out of school and homeschooling with a tutor! I am so distressed, but arriving at Brillkids I now have more hope for my 18 month old and am excited to get going with him.
Does anyone have advice on any online programs for a 9 year old with a reading disorder?
I am so excited by this program and am planning to get it out there!
Welcome to the forum, we’re so glad you found us! And just to start off, it is NEVER to late to help your child with reading and you are doing the right thing to intervene!
I don’t know about teaching specifically in regards to a reading disorder, but if you can get him to watch LR with his younger sibling that would be helpful. At age nine, he may benefit from additional materials, too. Have you considered Hooked on Phonics? This is an older blog post and some things have changed since writing it-- Little Reader now incorporates more phonics instruction and can break up words by chunks or letters, and my kids now have the stamina to read through the Master Reader stories unlike when they first started out. Anyways, this blog post will tell you more
I just think with a 9 year old, workbooks might be helpful too, unlike with a small baby. There is also: http://readingeggs.com/ and www.readingbear.org . There are many programs out there that can be used with an older child, but it would be helpful to know more about how he is doing. Does he know his letter sounds down pat, is he reading 3 letter basic words like pat/rat/cat, and so on? Does he struggle with breaking up big words to sound them out? It the problem decoding, stamina, or comprehension? Have you had his ears and eyes checked? (yes, really!) Does he have a diagnosed learning disability, in which case, non-reading related developmental activities might be helpful such as brachiation ladders, cross pattern crawling, brain gym, and swimming. We could help you better if you explained a little bit more.
We are not a group of professionals, just loving parents who want to teach our kids like you. So take our suggestions with a grain of salt, but hopefully you’ll get some helpful ideas here.
Hi, I am also a South African homeschooling mother. I would definitely start with your 18 month old - it has certainly helped my 2 girls - my 5 year old is now reading well and fluently and my 2 year old has started early readers already.
As for your 9 year old: I would join the well trained mind forums: www.welltrainedmind.com and ask in the learning challenges board. There are phonics programmes for dyslexic children. I also believe that you can teach the phonics using a book such as The Ordinary Parents guide to Teaching reading but adapting it - so picking the child’s favourite words and then teaching the phonics related to those words - you need to have a good concept of phonics yourself to do this though. I would probably not use an online program to teach a 9 year old who is struggling - you could try progressive phonics however which is possibly more aimed at slightly older children then most of the others ones we might mention here.
You may at some stage need to get your son checked for various issues. Americans mention special opthalmologists that we do not have in this country, but I would still start with a normal one for vision issues - usually there is a problem tracking then. Dyslexic is usually evident from other things that he would be doing while reading or writing.
I have a friend at a homeschool group here who believes in one particular programme that helped her 8 year old read and get to grade level after struggling for years - I will try and get the name of it for you.