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I decided to start HOD with my children. I found my oldest places very well in Preparing , but not sure for the younger .Need help !

He will be 7 in Oct. He has a moderate speech/language delay .
I have looked at the placement and saw the samples but I am still unsure . LHFHG seems below his level since he is finishing Singapore 1 and reading/spelling at about 3rd gr level. However, the reading aloud portion/comprehension seems very challenging to him and much above his level, at least at this time. Often he is not able to understand or narrate a simple paragraph from a story . It seems he has some auditory processing issues beside his language delay.

I cannot afford to buy three guides ( LHFHG & Beyond and Preparing ) . I can only buy two with the corresponding packages .

Should I buy LHFHG and use something else for spelling or Beyond is more appropriate for him ?

I appreciate any suggestions !

Any other suggestions about how to work with him on comprehension/narration is greatly appreciated ! At this time he is not even able to narrate one sentence in a proper way . He often misses the main idea & inferences . He cannot comprehend stories over preschool level such as Little Red Ridding Hood , especially from books without pictures.

By the way , I wonder if HOD would work for him since I noticed that many of the books are without pictures ? He is VERY visual. I suspect he might be in the autism spectrum .

Hello and welcome to HOD,
I know Carrie or Julie will provide more advice for you. I would be very tempted to place your 7 yr old in Little Hearts. My reason is the listening and narration level that you are sharing. The Little Hearts guide is more than it might appear on the surface. I understand your son is visual. But this is where you will need to guide him -- I believe all children right now especially boys, are visual and educators and counselors will then tell you he is a visual learner. The struggle I see with all children is training their mind to make mental pictures. Narration requires imaging, processing, and recall which is a great deal of mental activity that will take time to develop. It may take your son slightly more time than a non-visual learner but I highly suspect he will take to it much faster than you might think. Doing narration with just one sentence is ok. Praise him for his progress and continue bit by bit. This difficult but crucial skill has to be developed and it will take patience, love and guidance. This is where the beauty of Charlotte Mason and HOD come in. Carrie will gently lead all children of all types to develop these skills. Picture books are wonderful; but boys especially have to be trained to make the transition to text. Your son is at a great age where you can still guide him and young enough that he will be receptive to the level he needs. You can let him read at his level, but he may need to slow down or you might keep on eye on not letting him read too high above level because the mental processing will go along with the reading. I pray that you have a great HOD year!

Thank you so much for your response ! I too feel LHFHG is best for him , but what do I use for his advanced reading & spelling skills ?
I am interested to hear from other people who use LHFHG with advanced children in these areas. I guess I will continue what I was doing until now which was CLP Building Spelling Skills and maybe find a reading program such as Rod & Staff which I heard is great for kids with speech delay ?

I have many of the readers from Emerging reader packages and although he could read them very easily , he would not understand what happens in the story so at this point it would be useless to make him read them. I am also very weak in English , first because this is not my native tongue ( English is my 3rd language ) and second my brain is more mathematical than linguistic . Therefore I really need a hands-holding program that tells me what questions to ask ( possibly the answers too ) .

Would this be too much if I add to LHFHG ?

Also ,I have another question . From the samples I see some of the questions .They seem very analytical and I like that. Do all the readers & read aloud books have questions ? Are the answers somewhere in the guide?

the schedule for the Emerging Reader series is listed in the Beyond guide along with the comprehension questions to ask after each reading. I know you can't afford to buy 3 programs, but could you manage to buy just the Beyond teacher manual? You would have the emerging reader schedule with questions in it and the spelling words. Then you would be able to use the manual for the next school year too.

exodus4 wrote:Thank you so much for your response ! I too feel LHFHG is best for him , but what do I use for his advanced reading & spelling skills ?
I am interested to hear from other people who use LHFHG with advanced children in these areas. I guess I will continue what I was doing until now which was CLP Building Spelling Skills and maybe find a reading program such as Rod & Staff which I heard is great for kids with speech delay ?

I have many of the readers from Emerging reader packages and although he could read them very easily , he would not understand what happens in the story so at this point it would be useless to make him read them. I am also very weak in English , first because this is not my native tongue ( English is my 3rd language ) and second my brain is more mathematical than linguistic . Therefore I really need a hands-holding program that tells me what questions to ask ( possibly the answers too ) .

Would this be too much if I add to LHFHG ?

Also ,I have another question . From the samples I see some of the questions .They seem very analytical and I like that. Do all the readers & read aloud books have questions ? Are the answers somewhere in the guide?

I agree with the PPs, that LHFHG could be a good fit for him, specifically because of the attention that will be given to his listening comprehension skills. The first half is Bible stories with pictures, which would be a good support for him. The storytime books would be more challenging, but if you need to go more slowly through LHFHG just to address his comprehension skills, you can . There are no answers in the guide for the read-alouds, which is fine because you're the one doing the reading so you can figure it out together, or read the questions yourself the night before, just to make sure you know what the queston is asking . Here is a recent thread that addresses the topic of listening skills in LHFHG. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9508&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

I am also a speech-language pathologist who used to work in public schools, and I think that LHFHG is excellent for developing those skills. I agree with the PP, if you can possibly do it, get just the guide for Beyond as well, and then you can use that for the ER schedule and questions. There are no answers in the guide, but they're generally easy to figure out because he's reading aloud to you. Again, you can look them over the night before if needed. I recently finished the ER set with my son, and I highly recommend that you go through it with your son to build his comprehension skills. Starting with books that are easy for him to read, like one of the Bibles or the Frog and Toad type books would be great, because you know he can decode them, and you can just work on his understanding of what he reads. You can go slower than the schedule too, as it's in the appendix and not tied to any particular day. So if you need to slow down and read only half of the scheduled pages when the comprehension is more difficult, then you can do that. You are in a unique, God-given position to help your son learn, and he is so blessed to have such a caring mom! You will be doing more than any SLP can do in a weekly session, through your homeschool!

The spelling in Beyond is very simple to do as well, but you could certainly substitute in another program very easily. There are 2 lists in Beyond, and the next level is dictation in the Bigger Hearts guide, so it's possible he's at a higher level than the spelling in Beyond anyhow. HTH

Thank you so much for your helpful suggestions .

I have decided to wait one more year until I purchase LHFHG.He will be 8 then . I will just get Preparing for my oldest . I just checked from the library the little books about animals ( Reddy Fox , etc ) and I feel these are way too advanced for him in vocabulary & comprehension. We just read Beatrix Potters books , which I think arevery similar to Burgess and these are too way over his head as well . He gets bits and pieces from the stories but is not really able to grasp the whole picture .

I am not even sure what to do . I might put him to public school this year , maybe they have a special way to work with him . I am very discouraged
I suspect his biggest problem is the lack of vocabulary and that is why he is weak in comprehension. We do go to speech therapy but it does not seem to help at all .

English is my 3rd language and I have a strong accent , however my three other children are very advanced in English language vocabulary and comprehension . My poor English is not the cause for his speech delay , although my husband think it is my fault !

If anyone has any more thoughts ... please feel free to share.

Are there any samples of dictation from Preparing and CTC ?

Please don't get discouraged. Is it hard for you to read aloud the Burgess books? I'm asking because you said Eng was your 3rd lang. Wow, I praise you for that! If you are able to read aloud without too much trouble, I think he will develop the mental thinking as you grow this year. It will take some work. But God is so great, we always underestimate how powerful his Love and training can do... poor Moses told the Lord himself that he could not speak. As God answered him, so he will answer you for your child. Who made your mouth? Who made you....I am with you, Moses. Jesus repeats that comfort, " am with you always". He is your Creator and your child's. He knows what amazing things he already has planned.

exodus4 wrote:Are there any samples of dictation from Preparing and CTC ?

Here is a thread where Julie gives samples of the 3 levels of dictation in Preparing. It's the last one on the page.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1221#p9314

Please don't be discouraged. God has given you the desire to homeschool, and he will answer your prayers about the best way to meet his needs right now. I'll PM you some other ideas later...gotta make dinner now

Thank you so much for the link ! It looks like they both can start at 2 . They can easily spell the words and put the correct punctuation ( ? . ) but they both need more practice with commas .

My son with speech delay loves dictation and he is very good at it . This is very strange to me -- he can hardly talk correctly but is able to spell advanced words , like science , answers , abridged , etc .

Thank you Laura for your encouragement No, the books are not hard for me to read but I do have an accent ... however it does not bother my other kids and they understand everything I read. We sometimes look up words to see what they mean as I don't know every word, but I think I am pretty good in general .

Just sort of looking over your post and hoping I am not missing anything but I want to encourage you to go ahead with LHFHG and if you need to slow it down with your child that is language delayed go ahead and do that rather than wait. There are other books in the appendix that you can use to fill in the time if needed. And if you need the manual only of Beyond to use for math and LA only at a higher level lots of people find that works out just great. I think you are going to find the methods used in HOD are going to help your child with language.

My kind of gut reaction to your accent causing issues for your child is that probably is not the case since lots of kids grow up with parents that speak another language and do not themselves have accents. This is kind of how America has always been. Beyond that God knew when He gave you your son that you would have an accent and he would have language issues. Perhaps there is another reason such as you can empathize with your child that maybe is God's plan in that. I think when parents get scared their kids are not going to get something blame can often become an easier thing than facing the reality that they may be delayed. So I just pray that God shows you and your dh His perfect plan in this. I know He has one.

Praying for your decision. I have a child with language delays. It can be tough but I have tried to deal with it in the ps school system and all I found is that the ps system delayed my child's progress further. I think you are going to find that you can do this and you are the one God chose for the task. So be courageous and confident and I know God will reward that.