Brain Coach Tips

It happens every year. Summer draws to a close and plans are made for the start of a new school year.  Teachers, young and old, experienced and first timers, get a great sense of anticipation about the prospects the new year holds.

In this episode, Jan Bedell, the Little Giant Steps’ Brain Coach, will help you to see what is really important in your homeschool.  She will share how to stay on track with your purpose and vision and not get blindsided by an enemy that wants you to get frustrated and give up.

This week, you will hear how to ease into the year without shocking everyone.  When you start slow and build momentum it works better than trying to sprint from day one after being off for the summer break. Regardless of the age of the student, small adjustments can be made as you build to full use of curriculum for all ages instead of trying to get it all accomplished in the first week and coming away from the experience defeated or discouraged.  You know what they say about the best laid plans.  They most often go astray.

Of course, alongside these, suggestions about how to use the key components of The NeuroDevelopmental Approach to help all those little brains function better will be included. Whether you have children who are gifted, typically developing, or challenged with learning labels and struggles, there is something here for you.  As a bonus, if you are a mom that tends to be a perfectionistic or compare your home school program or results to other home schoolers there are life-changing recommendations for you.

Don’t miss the handout attached here with key references from the podcast and links to pertinent resources and discounts.

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Special needs require special focus. Many parents must focus a great deal on their child with special needs, and rightfully so. Yet, how does the situation of having a special needs sibling affect the other children in the house? All family members of children with ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, developmental delays, CAPD, Autism, syndromes, and genetic disorders of all types are affected by these complicated issues. Are there particular ways that parents can help their other children through the ups and downs of daily life with a special needs family member?

In this episode, Dr. Jan brings in a special guest, an adult sibling of an individual with special needs.  You will enjoy this candid discussion of what went right and what could have been better for these siblings, one with moderate/severe special needs and one gifted/typically developing.

Your awareness will be heightened as to what the siblings are going through in such cases and how to open the lines of communication to improve life for all involved.  Be informed of the need for long range planning and options that might be available. Above all, be encouraged by the character development that God produces in the midst of hard things.   Dr. Jan says, “As a parent of an individual with special needs, I wish someone would have had this discussion with me when my children were growing up.”

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Is your child struggling with math? Do you have a gifted child that needs to secure a good math foundation that will let them soar? Is your 5, 9 or 15 year old having trouble remembering their math facts? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, this is the podcast for you!

Thank you to our sponsor, CTC Math.

Dr. Jan will lead you through the foundation and cornerstone of math.

Foundation:

6. Word problems – holding pieces together long enough to figure out what is important information requires good auditory processing.

Get your free Auditory Processing Test Kit at LittleGiantSteps.com

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Do your children want to go to college? Do you wonder if they can succeed? Are they struggling just to make it through high school? Is taking a test a daunting prospect? This week you will hear an inspirational testimony of a seventeen-year-old who realized his life-long dream of going to college by using The NeuroDevelopmental Approach.

As parents we want our children to achieve their greatest potential! Dr. Jan gives helpful tips about simple activities that can be performed with children of all ages do so they don’t struggle academically. To be successful learners, we need organized brains, good short-term memory and correct mental storage of information. All of these are requirements so information is found easily and used efficiently. This is what the NeuroDevelopmental Approach is all about! Dr. Jan has been working for over 20 years to bring hope to struggling learners.

Listen to the Brain Coach Tips for today to get your healthy dose of hope. These tips will help whether your child is in college or wants to go to college in the future. Checkout the handout for mentioned products and discount codes.

The post But I Want To Go To College appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

Do your children have an awareness of the impact of good etiquette?  Today Dr. Jan Bedell speaks with Monica Irvine about how life-enhancing proper etiquette can be.

“If you are not taught, you don’t know,” is what Monica has learned from speaking with parents who have used her products. It is never too early to start your children on the road to good manners.  Monica has help for all ages.  Preschoolers to high schoolers can benefit from these life-enhancing social graces.  These lessons touch on everything from wedding and funeral etiquette to cellphone manners.  Monica has been told by many parents that their children have grown in confidence when they understand these etiquette skills.

“Children learn best when they can relate [to their environment] with the [proper] etiquette skill,”  says Monica.  Our society no longer teaches etiquette the way it has been taught in the past.  Our children need to be taught because we are sending messages to others no matter what we do.  Do we want to send a message that we are thinking of others or thinking of ourselves?  Tune in, to today’s Brain Coach Tips to learn how to teach your children how valuable it is to prefer others in social situations.

Sponsored by CTC Math.

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Do you have a child that just doesn’t get it? Today Dr. Jan Bedell visits with Prisca Lecroy one of the co-owners of CursiveLogic.

Thank you to our episode sponsor, CTC Math.

Prisca shares how their method of teaching cursive came about when her mother was tutoring a 23-year-old young man who needed to be able to sign his name to take the driver’s test. She developed a method that help this young man (age 16) sign his name in a 45-minute session. Since then many others have benefited from their easy method of learning cursive including those children with learning struggles.

They discuss the neurodevelopmental benefits of writing and reading cursive. As well as the importance of being about to read historical and family documents from the past. Tune into the Brain Coach Tip of the day to find out more about CursiveLogic.

The post Why Cursive? appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

Be sure to download the handout below.

As homeschoolers we tend to teach the way we were taught or at the very least we are influenced by how we experienced school ourselves.  In this episode, Jan Bedell, the Little Giant Steps Brain Coach, challenges the standard way of doing a few problems to teach a “math lesson” and then sending the student off to “do it on their own”.

Then we grade the papers the child finished and then what?  Do we do more instruction?  Typically not, we just send the paper back with the child and tell them to correct it.  No wonder so many children HATE math.  The myth: If we help the student or do some of the student’s problems for them, it makes us somehow guilty of cheating.   That myth is debunked in this episode.

Also, what about those magic cards we hold up when “working” on facts?  In this podcast, the lunacy of that frustrating exercise is uncovered and an effective approach to learning math facts quickly and painlessly is introduced.  Just how much faster would math assignments go if math facts were instantly recalled?  How much time is wasted correcting problems where there was a math fact error?  How much better would the child’s attitude be if math assignments were more quickly done so there was time to spend on other interest areas?  What about dysgraphia? Yes, with the techniques and resources introduced here, those symptoms are reduced or go away. Find how to make math easier in this 25 minute podcast.

Don’t miss the handout attached here with links to pertinent information and discounts.Handout

Photo Credits: DepositPhoto.com All Rights Reserved. Copyright  ilona75

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Sponsored by Reading Eggs

A prerequisite to reading using the phonics approach is a good auditory processing ability (auditory short-term memory).  If processing is not well developed, reading with phonics past three letter words can be next to impossible.  Don’t go buy another phonics program!  It isn’t the phonics program that is the issue, it is the processing that causes the difficulty.  You will learn what to do when phonics is not working and how to prepare the brain to be able to use phonics in the future.

When you work on this auditory processing skill and the others mentioned above, it can be instrumental in reducing the symptoms of dyslexia and other challenges.  Specific techniques to make reading easier are taught in this session. You will also understand how to improve comprehension.

Be sure to get the handout attached for information and discounts.

 – 17-MakingReadingEasier

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Neuroplasticity and rewiring the brain? Hmm? Do we really have to use such an unfamiliar word?  Yes, to describe the amazing gift that God has given us we can start with a big word and break it down.  It really is quite simple – “neuro” is having to do with the brain and “plasticity” is the ability to change.  Our brains are changing all the time. This is really good news when you have a struggling learner or a child with a label like dyslexia, ADD, ADHD or autism.  The key is knowing how to fuel the brain with the right kind of stimulation so it builds new pathways.  From these new pathways, the brain can receive, organize, process and store information well enough to bring it out and use it in everyday life.  With the right kind of stimulation, your brain can take little developmental steps to achieve giant strides in academics and overall function.  That is what happens when you use the products and services of Little Giant Steps.

It made a huge difference for her students and can make a difference for you and your family as well.  Applying just a little information can make all the difference in your child’s future.  We shouldn’t leave out the adults either!  It is never too late to change the brain.  Two ladies in their 50’s, one a reading tutor and the other a Montessori teacher who had always struggled with reading comprehension, raised their reading comprehension score by 3 ½ years in only four months’ time.   And guess what? They didn’t do any specific reading program.  All it took was organization and specific stimulation to the brain and their abilities radically changed.

Visit our sponsor Little Giant Steps for information about

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Another label has emerged for individuals that are having learning challenges – it’s CAPD. CAPD stands for Central Auditory Processing Disorder and is also referred to as APD or Auditory Processing Disorder.  There are different aspects of this “disorder” that negatively affect a person’s ability to function fully.  Symptoms include:

This label, like other labels in our educational system, is a symptomatic label.  That means if there are enough symptoms on a checklist, the label is given.  As always in NeuroDevelopment, the question is: what is causing these symptoms to occur? Our society’s practices are the culprit again!  In this episode, Jan Bedell, the Brain Coach, will provide a broader understanding of CAPD and its far-reaching effects.

If you know someone that has trouble following directions, staying on task, reading with a phonics approach, or comprehending what is said and read, this podcast can offer some real answers.  Many times the same symptoms that are associated with CAPD are also experienced by individuals that have or are suspected of having ADD, ADHD, dyslexia and other learning struggles.  This podcast will discuss how low auditory processing presents challenges for every sector of our society.  It will also include ways to improve the inefficiencies found in the symptoms of these labels. By learning how to improve these inefficiencies, you can help your child’s auditory processing improve greatly!

 Don’t miss the handout attached here with links to pertinent resources.

The post A New Label on the Block – CAPD appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.