Thank you all for sharing your ideas and experiences.

It is so helpful to hear from others with similar situations.
Today I tried some new approaches with ds. During History I tried to elaborate a little throughout the story and explain things a bit hoping that might help it "sink in" better. He did show some improvement in retaining the general idea of the information. The details were still shady but I was happy to hear him being able to at least tell me
something about what he had just heard. I did go back and re-read a part to help him answer a question and I'm ok with that if it will help train his ear.

Hopefully we will be able to slowly move away from that but I'm seeing we need more of a "hand-holding" method right now.
Later, for Storytime we trekked outside under the sycamore tree. We had to read two chapters today as we weren't able to get the last one from the previous week in. For the first chapter read it was the typical set-up - asking him to sit, listen, pay attention.......very frustrating. Mind you, I have dd and my other ds in the mix so I've got to rein them in as well during this time.
For the next chapter I let ds swing himself on the rope swing hanging in the tree while I read. Heck, why not? Nothing else was working.

Result? WOW! Huge improvement in what he took in! Not that he could recite the whole thing but he actually was able to answer a couple of the questions and when challenged to think a little deeper he actually put in a little effort.
Also, after doing his reading lesson today I asked him to tell back what the little story had been about. He was able to do it no problem. I then asked him to recall a story from a leve 1 reader he had read over a month ago. He was able to tell me alot about it - more than I even remembered!
So my conclusions are these: He is a very tactile and hands-on kinda guy. If he can see it or touch it it makes sense in his world. When he reads something himself it makes more sense to him than if I read it and he only
hears the story/information. I'm thinking he is also what I've heard called a kinesthetic learner - does well when in motion. But I need to research that more. So this was a good "A-ha!" day for me. The Lord revealed some very helpful truths and I am so very thankful. I'm hoping I'll be able to take this new information and use it for ds's advantage.
