Guess What?? He's Reading!

I posted many times in the past of my struggles with my 9 year old struggling reader who I suspect is mildly dyslexic.  We tried many different types of reading/phonics approaches but nothing was really taking hold and clicking for him.  He wanted to be able to read so bad that he would pick up books when the older children read in bed at night and pretended to read them.  It just broke my heart that nothing was working with him and there didn't seem to be anything I could do to help him.  We started using audio books quite a bit so he could listen to stories and he loved those, but he still wanted to learn to read.

Then I heard about this multi sensory spelling program called All About Spelling and decided to give that a try.  Within a couple of days of using AAS, he learned how to blend sounds to make a word.  Something about the physical action of pulling down the tokens for each sound made the connection in his brain.  I was so excited!  Shortly after starting AAS, I found out that they were developing a reading program with readers that used the spelling words.  I was so blessed to have the opportunity to review All About Reading Level 1!  The dots were beginning to connect and my son's reading was slowly starting to improve.

We went ahead and continued on with Level 2.  We are 3 lessons away from the end of the book.  Last week Alex went to the library and picked out a chapter book (he doesn't like to pick out "baby books" no matter how hard I try to convince him), but this time instead of pretending he is actually reading it!  He sat down with his daddy and read a chapter to him!  He struggled with a few of the words, especially when half the word ended on one page and continued on another, but he was reading and comprehending what he was reading!  Praise God!  He has continued to read the book on his own and has been telling me about it so I know he is understanding it, although I also know he is still skipping over the words he cannot figure out.  What amazing progress he has made!

Now I have a challenge.  I mentioned we are almost finished with Level 2.  All About Reading Level 3 is being written and won't be ready until the end of 2013 : (.  So I am not sure what I am going to do now.   I am going to continue on with All About Spelling Level 3, but need some readers to use also. He has been making such great progress and I want him to keep moving forward.   I emailed All About Learning's customer service and asked for some suggestions.  I received an answer back very quickly (I love good customer service!)  Some of her suggestions were I See Sam or Bob Books, which I know he will think are babyish and not read.  She also suggested Christian Liberty Press Readers or Sonlight.  I am goimg to take a look at those and see if they would be something that he can read successfully, but that he won't think are for little kids.  We need to keep feeding his knowledge so reading can be a joy and not a struggle!


*links to AAS AAR are my affiliate links.  I only form affiliate relationships with companies whose products I actually use and can recommend to others.

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