Review: AVKO Membership
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Do you have a child with reading difficulties? Are you a Sequential Spelling user? If so, you might be someone who would benefit from an AVKO membership. Have no idea who or what AVKO is? I didn’t either until I was given the opportunity to review their membership site. AVKO is a non-profit organization that’s been in operation since 1974. According to their website, their mission is
to provide free and low-cost resources to home and school educators in order to achieve literacy for all, even despite learning challenges or dyslexia.
I have two kids who, I’m sure, have dyslexia. They have never been officially diagnosed. Though my oldest was diagnosed with several tracking and auditory-processing delays, the doctor she visited stopped just short of saying, outright, that she was dyslexic.
Even so, moms — especially homeschool moms who are with our kids all day — can see the signs and the symptoms. This mom-diagnosis was further confirmed just skimming around AVKO founder, Don McCabe’s book, To Teach a Dyslexic, which is free ($14.95 value) with an AVKO membership.
To Teach a Dyslexic, Mr. McCabe’s autobiographical book, written in his open, conversational style, tells his story of overcoming his own dyslexia by sheer will and blissful ignorance of the disability. He expresses, in very readable language, what dyslexia is and what it isn’t and how to help a child who displays characteristics of dyslexia.
It was very encouraging to read his paraphrasing of dyslexia symptoms — to have the symptoms put into layman’s terms. Sometimes simply knowing what the problem is — and that it’s not just you or your child — makes a learning disability or delay easier to deal with.
In addition to To Teach a Dyslexic, an AVKO membership, which costs $25 for a full year, includes several free eBooks, such as:
- The Patterns of English Spelling (10 volumes)
- Word Families in Context
- Starting at Square One
- The Teaching of Reading & Spelling
- The Reading Teacher’s List of Over 5,500 Basic Spelling Words
Members also get a 25% discount on all the materials ordered through AVKO’s website, access to Don McCabe’s workshops in MP3 format, the AVKO newsletter and more. If you’re already thinking of purchasing a couple of AVKO’s books, you might as well take advantage of the membership. Head on over and take a look to see what all they have to offer.
I will warn you that there is some language in some of the books, including To Teach a Dyslexic and some of the pun books, that some might find offensive. It’s not a main component of any of the books, certainly, and I found the value of what I read in To Teach a Dyslexic far out weighed any offense I might have felt, but I didn’t want anybody to be able to say that I didn’t warn you.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
Cindy's using Sequential Spelling this year ~ so far, we like it. I don't have a membership or anything, but I might look further into it.
She's also doing CK Explore Chemistry, which I spotted you mentioning lately ~ we're not very far into it yet though..there's been so much else going on, that was one subject that got set on the back burner for a while. Ha. Burner.. chemistry..get it? Okay it totally wasn't funny. 😛
Thank you for that review. I am pretty sure that my son who is 9 is dyslexic even though he has never been "officially" diagnosed either.
Just this week-end I was looking at Sequential Spelling. I'm pretty sure I'm going to order that for him soon.
I'm also considering the AVKO Membership-I think it would be beneficial to me. Thank you also for the heads up on the language and potentially offensive content-I appreciate being made aware of that beforehand!