The Flat on Cabaniss Crescent

Computer Software- Reading, Spelling, & Written Expression Skills

This is a list reccomended to us by Tigger's Neuropsychologist:

Computer Software To Develop Reading, Spelling, & Written Expression Skills

Age 3-6 Reader Rabbit’s Interactive Reading Journey 1, The Learning Company. Kids journey to 20 different lands, each focusing on a different letter of the alphabet or sound.  Then they answer questions about the information they’ve read along the way.

Age 3-10 Arthur’s Teacher Trouble, Broderbund. Arthur the aardvark is having problems at school. He got stuck with the strictest teacher (Mr. Ratburn) & needs to prepare for a school-wide spelling bee. Kids help Arthur prepare.

Age 3-10 Sierra’s School House/English, Sierra On-Line. A friendly alien named Adi runs a multiple-choice quiz show on vocabulary, reading comprehension, proofreading, & more. Excellent graphics, animation, & video clips. Interactive learning games are accessible as a reward for good quiz performance.

Age 4-8 Reading Blaster, Jr., Davidson & Associates. Join Kid Blasternaut & his crew on missions in fanciful worlds. Learn beginning reading, decoding vowels & consonants, matching pictures, forming sentences.

Age 5-9 Reader Rabbit’s Reading Development Library (4 reading levels), The Learning Company. Stories told from 3 different points of view. These games help kids learn how plots work.

Age 6-12 The Amazing Writing Machine, Broderbund, ages 6-12. Helps kids express their thoughts by creating stories or adding to pre-written ones.  Hundreds of layouts feature different places to insert text & graphics.

Age 7-10 Reading Blaster: Invasion of the Word Snatchers, Davidson & Associates. Illitera has stolen all the words from Earth. Help get them back by completing reading activities.

Age 8+ Creative Writer II, Microsoft. Hundreds of “story starters.” Many fonts, music themes, pieces of clip art, & an Internet web project.

Grade preK-1 Kid Phonics 1, Davidson & Associates. Beginning reading and decoding skills.

Grade preK-3 Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! For Kids, Mindscape.

Grade K-1 Reader Rabbit 1, The Learning Company. Improve letter & word recognition, memory skills & vocabulary.

Grade K-2, 2-3, 3-5 Explore-A-Story, D.C. Heath & Co., only for Apple. Students examine new possibilities & appreciate the variety of forms a story can assume as they move objects & characters on the screen & provide text for their own ideas.

Grade K-12 Language Experience Recorder Plus, Teacher Support Software, only for Apple

Grade 1-3 Reader Rabbit 2, The Learning Company. Work on compound words, consonant blends, homonyms, antonyms, & alphabetizing skills.

Grade 1-3 Kid Phonics 2, Davidson & Associates. Progress from decoding words to building whole sentences.

Grade 1-6 Kidwriter, Spinnaker. Create stories by selecting a variety of pictures & writing stories to go with them.

Grade 1-8 Read, Write, and Publish, D.C. Heath & Co. Creative writing is the focus.  The program helps generate ideas, take notes, organize information, write & edit, and revise the text.  Graphics included.

Grade 1-12 Spell-It!, Davidson & Associates. Practice spelling rules & 1,000 commonly misspelled words using drills presenting the word in sentence context. An arcade game format provides additional practice recognizing the word among incorrect spellings & in an unscrambling game.  Personal word lists can be created.

Grade 2-4 Reader Rabbit 3, The Learning Company. Join Reader Rabbit in an investigative journey that builds reading skills while improving writing, vocabulary, & thinking skills. Complete stories & even print a newspaper to display their skills.

Grade 2-12 Spellicopter, DLM, grade 2-12. Maneuver a helicopter through obstacles in the sky in order to pick up letters to spell a word. The word is presented in sentence context. Personal spelling lists can be added.

Grade 3-8 The Grammar Examiner, Design Ware. As a cub reporter, the student works in a newspaper.  To earn pay, kids edit paragraphs and practice punctuation, capitalization, subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, adverb & adjective usage, & homonyms.

Local computer software stores have many of these products or can order them.  Some of the publishers’ phone numbers are listed below.

Broderbund -          800-521-6263      
Davidson & Associates -          800-545-7677      
D.C. Heath & Co. -
Design Ware -
DLM -
Edmark -          800-691-2985      
The Learning Company -          800-227-5609      
Microsoft -          800-426-9400      
Mindscape -
Spinnaker -
Sierra On-Line -          800-757-7707      

Our Homeschool Schedule/Extracurricular Activities

I am still working out all the kinks in our schedule, but ideally the way it will work is that we will be home 3 days week and 2 days we will run errands and do extra-curricular activites and other fun stuff.  Tigger will start OT and Speech soon and I am not sure what day yet.  I am hoping that we can do the therapies on the same day, back to back.  I am also hoping that we will only need therapy one day a week vs. two.  Once we know the OT and Speech schedule we can build everything else around that.  We have our evaluations Tuesday so hopefully soon after that.

I went ahead and signed both Tigger and Piglet up for gymnastics last week.  It was kind of funny: we went for a trial class and they were the only ones there.  When we asked where all the other kids were we were told that no one has signed up for this particular time so they were the only 2.  I told the coach part of what I was hoping for was to give them an opportunity to be around other kids since we are homeschooling and we may try to find another class time but we stayed and tried it that day.  It ended up being great- basically a free private lesson for my kids.  They have never had that kind of one on one time with a gymnastics coach.  The coach and I agreed that the one on one time was good for them so he could work with them individually and then in about a month we will transfer to another class with more kids.  At that point they will also be separated, Tigger going to a Boys Beginner class and Piglet staying in Tumble-tots for 3-5 year olds.  So one day a week is gymnastics. 

I am trying to decide if Piglet should also have ballet.  The one little girl her age in the neighborhood that she has become friendly with goes to a ballet class and I think it would be neat for them to experience that together.  We'll see how things look in a few weeks and will maybe add that in November.

I also want Tigger to join the Swim Team.  They practice for an hour 4 nights a week at the indoor pool right across the street from us and have meets about once a month.  Swimming is one of his strong skills and we need to nurture that and give him an opportunity to keep up his skills all winter.  I am going to talk to the coach this Monday to arrange a try out.  If swim team does not work, then we will just attend open family swim 3-4 nights per week.  I wonder a bit if we should just plan to do family swim since it will be good for Piglet too.  If he does get on the team, I will still have to make a point to take her there at least once a week.