Thanks to our sponsor! NowPrograms.com – visit the website for more information.

Do you have a child with special needs?  Are you lost, and you don’t know where to turn for help?  Do you just need some encouragement? Today Dr. Jan Bedell talks with Peggy Ployhar, the CEO and founder of SPED Homeschool.  The mission for SPED Homeschool is – Helping students succeed through parent directed special education homeschooling.

Peggy, the guest on Brain Coach Tips this week, is a homeschool mom, writer, speaker, blogger and has served in two state home school organizations as their special needs advisor.   Peggy’s life has been full of special needs situations as her parents adopted 10 children with special needs and she home schooled both of her sons that had special learning requirements.

Peggy brings many years of knowledge about special needs home schooling to this interview and can guide you to resources to help in your journey of home schooling your child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS), Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, ADD/ADHD, CP, Down, or a myriad of other syndromes.  Peggy will also share her dreams and vision for SPED Homeschool, a nonprofit organization that serves the Special Needs Homeschool Community.

Listen in to today’s Brain Coach Tips interview.

The post Special Needs Resources appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

Do you have a child that is a struggling reader?  Have you wondered if your child has dyslexia?   Once again Dr. Jan asks us to think differently and drop the thought of labels.  Labels are given when you can check off a number of present symptoms. What good is that?  The Neurodevelopmental Approach looks at what is causing the symptoms and finding solutions for those symptoms.

Common symptoms of dyslexia are difficulties with reading, writing, and spelling.  To be able to read, you need to have good visual abilities. To write, you need to know where you are spatially so that you can make your hand move across the page accurately. To spell correctly, the ability to visualize is extremely important.  Don’t know what all this means?  Listen to the podcast for a thorough explanation.

If your child has symptoms such as difficulty blending sounds into words, reversing letters, and/or reading slowly or hesitantly, don’t despair. Dr. Jan shares possible causes and solutions for these struggles.  There is hope. If you address the problems, these symptoms diminish or disappear entirely.  Once these issues are no longer troublesome, students quickly catch up to their peers.

This week’s Brain Coach Tip will start you down the path to taking the struggles out of reading.  You will also learn how you can be proactive with your preschool child to avoid reading struggles in their future.

Don’t miss the handout attached here with the symptoms of Dyslexia and the root causes that could be addressed with NeuroDevelopment.  You will also find discount codes.

https://www.nowprograms.com

The post Reading Struggles appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

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.

The post Strategic School Start appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

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.”

The post Siblings Of Special Needs Kids appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

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

The post Cornerstone of Math: Replay appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

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.

The post Etiquette Made Easy appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

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

The post Making Math Easier appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.

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

The post Making Reading Easier | Replay appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.