Pat Wyman

I read Vocabulary Made Easy, in exchange for review from Homeschool.com. I got the book for free on Amazon on a Kindle Free Day. The book was written by Pat Wyman.I took my time reading this book because I wanted to absorb the information. I would love for Brad to learn new words, despite his disabililty. The first thing, which stood out, was the author provided links for three more free books on math, reading, and spelling.

Vocabulary made easy focuses on word association and pictures, which is what Brad's speech therapists use with him. Brad will recognize the picture and know the words more, than seeing a word and recognizing it. The book also talks about using visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learning styles. The author recommends taking a learning style quiz on How to Learn before reading the book. From experience, I know Brad is more visual, while Kalen is kinesthetic (touch and feeling, movement). I also took the quiz for myself:

The book also focuses on word association. If your children associate a word to a word or a word to a picture, it increases learning. For example, Romeo is associated to Juliet, or a song may help remember a memory. For example, I had an incident, which happened in 2001 and TLC's unpretty was playing in the background. I now associate that memory to TLC's song. You also can associate words to sounds. Another technique is to play music, while teaching your kids new words.

Anyway, the book teaches kids to learn one new word at a time, versus learning multiple words. Writing down 20 or so words and learning the meanings is not always effective either.

This was a great book. I would love to know if the techniques can be modified to special needs kids, more so, on Brad and Kalen's level. I definitely will try the index cards. I have been cutting up some of Brad's old home school vocabulary and making flash cards from the spelling sheets. Trying to match up the pictures to the words. Been a slow process though since I have a lot of work to cut up.en a slow process though since I have a lot of work to cut up.… (más)