Building Blocks for Learning - GIVEAWAY

Do you have a child with a learning disability?  Today I am going to tell you the story of a child with a learning disability.

From a very early age, I could tell that Peanut was not quite walking on the same track that Tinkerbell had walked. Initially I just watched, knowing that each child develops at their own rate. Tinkerbell rolled, crawled, and scooted to get where she wanted to go until she was 15 months old. Peanut was rolling over at two weeks of age, and from day 1, physically was trying to keep up with her sister.

When Tinkerbell started homeschooling Kindergarten, Peanut wanted to “do school”. She would take a piece of paper and a pen and scribble, scribble, scribble. We even have a Make-a-Plate that she made at that age (that she is dreadfully embarrassed by!).

When it was time for Peanut to start Kindergarten, we struggled. She constantly reversed her “d” and “b”, and didn’t know (or see the difference) between “b” and “p”. We worked awhile, laid off awhile, worked awhile, etc.  By the time we were working on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, I was fairly certain we were in serious trouble. One day she would know 2X3, the next day she wouldn’t. But what could a home schooling family (in 1995) do? By the time she was 14, she was convinced she was just “stupid”, and was biding her time until she could legally drop out of school, and figured she could find a job somewhere until she could get married and just get along without any more education.

But then God provided us a window into a program for treating her LD, and a way to get her into that program. That student who had plans to drop out of high school acquired hope, and a belief that she could not only graduate high school but that she could go to college. That same Peanut graduated from college last May with a 3.85 GPA. Wow!

I have recently been approached by a company who has created a program like the one my daughter went through. They offer a comparable program that offers a 12-month program like the one my daughter went through, administered by the parent at home, for a monthly fee of $67. This program is worth this amount. What's more, if you sign up below, you might be selected to WIN this one year program to use with your own child! Keep reading!...

Learning Link Technologies

Guest Post: 

Dealing with a Learning Problem? You May Need a New Approach.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.   Einstein coined this phrase, and it holds true now more than ever, especially when referring to academic success and how we help those students who are struggling to learn.

Traditional approaches to solving learning problems will take a student who has been in a classroom all day, a fatigued learner, who is not able to learn with methods being taught, and try to teach that student more of what didn’t work all day.  This is insane!  For progress to be made, the student needs to be taught in a different way.

Piling on more academics when dealing with a student who is not performing well academically can be a recipe for disaster.

The solution is neuro-sensory educational therapy (NSET).  NSET takes students back to the very basic level of learning – gross motor skills. Skills that may not have been formed in development. The NSET program is now available as a program you can do at home with your child. The system is very easy to follow and highly effective at correcting learning problems. You can find the complete system at http://www.learning-aids.com

Babies are not born hard wired for every task.  They wire their brains as they develop. Tasks that cross the vertical midline (crawling) are what helps them develop. Developing  gross motor skills is the first and most necessary step that needs to take place to build a proper learning foundation for students. This is what may have been missed and without it learning success is nearly impossible.

NSET first develops gross motor skills and once those skills are in place, NSET moves the student into the visual level.  75-90 percent of what we take in is visual, so this is a very important step in the learning success.  NSET works students on visual processing skills as well as eye tracking, visual closure, visual discrimination, visual memory, and visual motor integration.  These skills are vitally important for students to be able to read, write, spell, and perform basic mathematical operations.  Yet, students are rarely taught these skills with traditional approaches.  Instead, they are fed another dose of academics.

NSET breaks the academics down into smaller pieces and slowly build up the learning foundation.

Next, NSET takes the student into an auditory level.  So many students struggle to hear correctly or fail to filter out extraneous information.  It is extremely important for a student to be able to hear sounds correctly to read, write, and spell.   Students work on auditory discrimination, auditory closure, auditory memory, auditory processing, and basic following of directions to prepare students academically as well as to sit in a classroom and listen and correctly process a teacher’s lecture.

As an added bonus, focusing skills will come into play naturally once the student’s visual and auditory skills are in place. Many students are misdiagnosed as having ADD, when in fact they are struggling to focus because of distractions in their environment or weak learning systems.  It is hard to focus if you can’t tune out background noises or if the letters on your pages are wiggling and not holding still.

While working with the student’s sensory learning systems, it’s important to also incorporate brain retraining activities that help the student strengthen the communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain as well as build new neural pathways in the brain.  This is a specific, step by step process where basic skills such as eye tracking are strengthened and slowly multi-step thinking and processing skills are attained.

Although this approach is not traditional in the sense that it is not a dose of more academics, this method of helping students overcome learning differences has been used successfully for almost 15 years.  Students who have failed to learn with other approaches find success, usually within 12 to 18 months with consistent application.  And, there is nothing better than watching a student go from failure to success, both academically and in life.

Whether you are concerned about a minor learning difference or you are dealing with something more serious such as needing Treatment for dysgraphia (trouble with writing),  Dyscalculia Treatment (Like dyslexia for math), or dyslexia treatment NSET might be just what you are looking for. You can find lots more information at http://www.learning-aids.com/

Learning Links Technologies approached me and offered me the opportunity to have this program for one year to use with my son, to review for you, my readers. However, while my son might be able to benefit from this program, I am not convinced that he has a learning disability. When my daughter, with the learning disability, learned that there was hope, it gave her the impetus she would need to stick with a difficult therapy to get past her issues and learn how to learn. A parent and the student need to be convinced there is a need, and need to be committed to the cure, and my son and I would have been.

I am being given the opportunity to give one of you a one year program worth $600!

 

I am convinced, though, of the value of this program! And I so, so wanted to be able to offer one of my readers an opportunity to win this program for free for a year. So the company was able to provide me with the guest post above, and I am able to now a one year program, valued at $600! This contest will run from today until 3/1, and the winner will be notified 3/2 and announced shortly thereafter.

I tried to use a special widget to receive entries, but I seem to have messed it up, so I have removed it. I'm sorry if you were inconvenienced. Here's how I'll do it:

• Comment below that you want it, and you will receive one entry;
• Comment below after you Tweet about my giveaway with my link embedded, and you will get an entry;
• Comment below after you post about it on Facebook and you can get an entry.

I hope it goes to someone who really wants it, who will be able to take the time to use it well. Please do follow the links to read up about it, okay?

Blessings.