Mood:  a-ok

I've learned to never say never.

I used to say things like, "My kids will never act like that!" or "If I ever caught my child doing that I'd...".

Anyway, I found out long ago that God has a sense of humor. Don't ever say "never".

That also carried over to those non-controllable things. It's not that I thought it was impossible for one of my kids to have cancer or to have autism, it's just that I never thought about it or put it out of my mind. It was like I was living in a state of denial.

Well, guess what. John Allen did have cancer when he was a baby, and Joshua is on the autism spectrum, and, more recently, we found out that Jacob has severe speech problems.

Now, with the cancer that John Allen had, there was absolutely nothing that we could have done at home to prevent it or help cure it. It was just one of those things that happened. With Joshua, although no one truly knows what causes autism, there are ways to combat it and we are doing our best to do that.

It used to be with speech problems you just loaded them up to take them to speech therapy, or perhaps, if they went to public school, they went to speech during school hours. There was, however, very little you could do at home except for some mouth exercises or something like that...until now!

It just so happens, that at about the same time that Jacob was diagnosed with his speech problems, that the TOS Homeschool Crew was given a program called "Super Star Speech" written by Debbie Lott. Debbie Lott is a speech therapist and just happens to be a homeschooler. She recognized that there were many speech difficulties that is best left up to professionals to help, but there are many minor speech problems that can worked on successfully at home.

I was really wanting to dig into this with Jacob to see how much we could help him during our homeschool hours, but with his frequent testing, and recent tonsillectomy, I wasn't able to get very far. I have fudged and put off writing it until we could work more with it, but I really feel that in order for this review not to be totally drastically over due (it's already well over a week - maybe two - overdue ) I need to get at least a description of Super Star Speech written, and then give a more thorough update after we have used it for some time.  

I can however view Super Star Speech with somewhat of a trained eye because, as an educational therapist, I did work with many children who had minor speech difficulties. I will tell you that what I have noticed from reading through Super Star Speech and using it briefly is that it is very well done. 

The first thing that Ms. Lott recommends, if you haven't had formal testing done of course, is to give your child an informal test at home. Everything is laid out and explained in very laymen terms as to what to do. You test how well your child can say sounds at the beginning of a word, in the middle of a word and at the end of a word by having them look at a picture and tell you what it is. You then mark on a sheet if they said it correctly or if they had difficulty with that sound. 

Depending on your child's age, there are going to be some sounds that he is expected to know and some sounds that he may be too young to be expected to say correctly. That is all taken into consideration when scoring the results.

After discovering their weak areas, the work begins.  There are complete instructions, again in laymen term, on how to write a therapy plan and how to proceed with therapy. There are even specific instructions for when a child is having difficulty differentiating between two different sounds such as P/B, T/D, or K/G, among others. She explains all aspects of the therapy session from using a mirror to help you child see the correct and incorrect way to form letters, to making the session fun and using games.

Nothing is left out and nothing is left to chance. Everything is laid out and very well explained. From the testing, to the planning, to the therapy. i really like what I see and what I have used thus far, and am really looking forward to getting more into the meat of the program and writing to you all about our experiences. 

To find our more about Debbie Lott's Super Star Speech program, you can click here or on any one of the hi-lighted links above. To find out what some of the other TOS Crew Members thought about the Super Star Speech program or some of Debra Lott's other fantastic homeschool products, you can click here. Happy home educating!

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I was given a free download of the Super Star Speech program in order to try out and review on my blog.

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