heartofdakota.com

Or even some software?

My 7 year is still struggling with reading. He loves being on the computer though and I thought maybe I could channel that into reading.

Does that sound like a good idea?

Hi! Check out www.starfall.com. My kids love this website and it has really helped my kids in the learning to read/beginning reader stage. There are various games, interactive "videos" about different letter sounds, word blending activities, etc. The interactive online "books" (gingerbread man, snowman, etc.) are great too! It's a high-quality website that's easy for the kids to navigate and no advertisements/pop-ups to worry about.

I let my ds5 use starfall when we hit a brickwall with Phonics Pathways. After just a few lessons he has blossomed! BUT, there are not many lessons that actaully teach the phonics so I found ClickNKids.com and we LOVE it! It's much more complete and although it's not free, it's very well priced-- you can use it with your other children as well after one child finishes or give the subscription to a friend. If you decide to get it, enter my email address in the promotional code section at checkout to get $10 off. hmschooling @ cox . net

I spent hours researching for an online phonics program and this is the best out there according to all the reviews (and my son )! I hope you find it works for you too!


ETA: I forgot to mention that it has progress tracking as well. It tells you what lesson was done, any letters/words that took more than one time to get right, how many presentations of each letter/blend so far, and the percentage you child has correctly identified it, as well as the average percentage of all children using the program. They recommend anything 10% below that average be repeated...I just repeat anything below 90%. It's so easy to navigate and see how ds is doing. He read his first book yesterday after using this and last week, he could barely blend 3 letter words!

We've used Study Dog. My nearly 8 year old has finaly turned on with reading, but it's just taken awhile. Now that she is maturing it seems to be coming alot easier. She's working on some old Bob Jones grade 1 readers that were given to me. She just read through Nora Gaydos level 3 readers, so we are really improving.

Also, time4learning might work. We used it to supplement only. It worked great for days when I was busy doing alot and still needed to get school done. I paid $20 a month and there was a way where I could go in and modify our settings so I could use it for all 3 of my kids for that price. I dropped it when money became tight, but I was glad I had used it for a few months. Some of it was alot better and more user friendly than other parts. Oh, and the way I used it I had to keep track on a notebook what lessons they had done...since I went with the cheaper way the lessons weren't individualized for each child.

I don't think I'd use this for school full time unless I was in a temporary bind...there were just too many user problems we had with it. Also, for us, it was a bit inconsistent in it's math and reading...some lessons were extremely easy and some were extremely hard. It just didn't slowly flow and gradually get harder.

HTH,
Alison