Online reading program for son with speech/learning issues?

[mauimama5]

Hi :) We home school our 6 kids.   Our 6yr old has speech issues.  I am struggling on how to teach him to read. He knows all of his capital letters and a couple lowercase.  He can spell No, Ho-ho-ho, and Charlie. That said he still forgets how to spell his name.  Most days he remembers, some days he forgets.  This memory recall issue happens fairly often in his life. The info is in there but he misplaces it for a bit. It took 2 years for him to get his name down. 

 He is a very sweet boy, very sensitive.  And he really wants to learn to read. However...he won't cooperate with the BOB books because they are to "babyish".  Same for Starfall and Reading Eggs.  He would use Starfall last year but not this year. I looked into Explode the Code but I think it is to advanced. 

I am really interested in finding him something he can do online. To supplement things we do around the kitchen table. I plan to write out the BOB books onto index cards and use those. He really enjoys the computer. His brother is using Teaching Textbooks for math. Charlie asked if he could try to.  So I made him an account and he has flown through the first 4 lessons.  Of 3rd grade math!  I was really surprised.  The lessons are narrated and other than reading a few things back to him here and there he is able to do it on his own. I think  he is really responding to the freedom of it and also the fact that it is what his 7yr old bother is doing too.  

If anyone has any tips for kitchen table learning or computer/online programs let me know.  

Thanks!

[moss]

my son did part of the "fast for word" program and after that his reading really took off.  i'm looking into earobics now (same idea as fast forWord, but less expensive).  we could continue with the next sections of the fast forWord program, but it's really expensive and time consuming.

[FarmerBeth]

We did "word trains" a lot.  My son generated his own sentences which I wrote.  We made sentences that were taped onto a word train and he looked at the words carefully and tried to remember their shape.  Then I'd scramble and he'd re-order them.  I also let him try books way beyond his level and sound out individual words painstakingly.  He was very much in the same shoes as your son with spelling name, could only answer the letter X in a word/number/shape/color naming quiz.  It looked terrible and the teachers panicked a whole lot.  He's caught up now, out of reading recovery and reading simple chapter books like "Puppy Place".  He still mixes up the names of letters anyways, but reads words well because he remembers what they look like as a picture and associates them with a mental picture (as he was taught in speech therapy).  We didn't do anything special so much as keep plugging at it.

[SpeechieK]

There are some nice resources on this site

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks1literacy.html

I find kids particularly like the CVC maker and the word wheel. There is a good mix of phonics and other literacy strategies.

However it is a UK site so assuming you are based in the USA your son might find the accent on some of the spoken sounds difficult. I found this site by searching for "interactive whiteboard resources" in google originally so I am sure there are similar American ones.

Although these games are intended for classroom teaching I find they work just as well one to one.

Without more info on your sons speech issues it is hard to be specific but in general, kids who struggle with pronunciation of speech sounds may need help with the "phonological awareness" level that comes pre-literacy.

Can he identify rhyming words, generate real and nonsense rhyming words, clap beats in speech (words and syllables), tell you the beginning / middle / end sound in a word etc, etc?

This is not an online game but a really simple one I use for rhyme that boys in particular love - the "rhyming rap"

You say (or rap)  "I'm looking for a word that rhymes with cat, you wear it on your head, it's a ... (hat)"

or "I'm looking for a word that rhymes with blog, it's green and it hops, it's a ...(frog)"

You can make this as easy or hard as you like, just make up the first bit and have your child fill in the missing word. When they get good at it, switch around ad have them make up ones for you to guess!