The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
110. Addressing Learning Challenges & Customizing Homeschool Education w/Joanna Meliti
Unlock the potential of your child's education with insights from our guest, Joanna Meliti, a seasoned homeschool mom and co-founder of Home and School Tutoring Pods. We promise that you'll gain valuable strategies for supporting children with learning difficulties in reading and math. Joanna shares her personal journey and expertise, offering practical tips for using phonics, manipulatives, and real-life experiences to create a rich learning environment. You’ll discover why it's perfectly okay for your child to read at their own pace and how tools like "Phonics from A to Z" can guide you in this rewarding journey.
In this episode, we explore the foundational elements of literacy and the surprising role of reflexes in education. Joanna delves into phonemic awareness, rhyming skills, and the building blocks of reading, likening them to constructing a house. We also discuss the impact of retained primitive reflexes on learning, such as how they can affect skills like writing and reading. Joanna emphasizes the importance of addressing these early with specialists such as occupational therapists, providing you with actionable activities and resources to support your child's development at home.
Finally, we journey through the world of customized homeschooling, where Joanna highlights the power of personalized learning and community support. Learn about the benefits of multigrade learning pods and how they foster peer teaching and collaboration. Embrace the adaptability of homeschooling with strategies tailored to each child's unique needs, including creative tools for overcoming learning challenges. Joanna encourages parents to be their child's biggest cheerleaders and to seek professional help when needed, ensuring a nurturing and successful educational experience. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for more insights, and remember the inspirational message from Proverbs 22:6 as we wish you a radiant homeschooling adventure ahead.
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through this life and with your relationship with Christ. We have been in the series on homeschooling and today we welcome Joanna Maliti. She is a homeschool mom and the co-founder of Home and School Tutoring Pods in Strawberry Plains, tennessee. She has an MS degree in inclusive education and was a classroom teacher for 11 years. During her full-time teaching career she was a teacher, mentor, k3 team leader, school board teacher representative, language arts content writer and was awarded the Dean's Award in Education. For the past five years, she has been focused on tutoring students and supporting parents in their homeschooling journey. In her free time, she enjoys hiking with her husband of 16 years and six-year-old daughter and reading a good book with a biscotti and a hot cup of tea. I love that. Joanna, thank you so much for being here today.
Joanna Meliti:Thank you for having me.
Rebecca Twomey:Last week, joanna shared what inspired her to transition from a full-time classroom teacher to homeschooling, along with what motivated her to co-founding home and school tutoring pods. So if you are tuning in for the first time, be sure to listen in on last week's episode for part one. Today we are diving right into part two and it has a large focus on overcoming learning challenges. So you're not going to want to miss this. Let's get into it. So tell us a little bit about some of the most common learning challenges, or even learning disabilities. I don't know what the correct language is to use here, but you know that you have been seeing in homeschool settings and how parents can help to navigate those particular challenges.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah.
Joanna Meliti:So I think you know, in talking about reading or kind of on the reading topic, I see and hear parents talk about, oh, my kid's not reading, or you know they're facing some of these challenges. And if we look at what some of the other countries are doing, you know, we know about Finland and how they score. We are not, we're forcing. So the mindset is we force kids into reading starting at age five. Kindergarten used to be all play and now the big shift has been they need to come into kindergarten knowing their letters and sounds, because they need to start reading a lot sooner. So we think our kids are behind if they're not reading by six or by seven. And there's so much research to support that. Young kids are primarily right brain learners and until age seven, when there's this huge development that happens, this rapid growth at H7, do they then shift to right brain and that's where reading takes place. And so one of the challenges that I think parents might face at home with learning is what if my kid's not doing enough? What if they're not where they're supposed to be? Well, the mind shift is they don't have to be anywhere by a certain point, based on what society tells us because for a kid to start reading at seven or even eight years old is okay. They're not going to be if a kid starts reading at four or five, there's no research to support that they will quote be a better reader than someone who reads at age seven. There's that window where it can all happen within that child's time and readiness.
Joanna Meliti:There are, um, there's a book that's called phonics from A to Z, and I would recommend that book to families that are kind of maybe wondering, you know, what's the best way to navigate reading and some of the learning challenges might my child might have, because it focuses heavily on phonics.
Joanna Meliti:And so if you're facing some challenges with reading, then I would encourage families to kind of take a step back and see what they're using, what their approach is, and kind of start looking into other methods of helping their child learn, because not every kid is going to learn the same way. For math one of the biggest things making things so concrete, so visual there's different stages that kids go through when they're learning and if we can give them manipulatives when they're learning, especially with math, it's going to make it so much more concrete to them because we don't want to move into like the abstract thinking of what's three plus five, until they're at least 12 years old. And so you know, we kind of look at our approach to what we're doing. Are we helping them grasp with ideas, with like stories, examples?
Joanna Meliti:real life experiences. So one of the things is, if you're having learning challenges or seeing learning challenges at home, I would just, you know, go back to that mindset of play. Everything goes back to making it more real to the kid. You know, I love teaching fractions with pizza.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, there you go, or Legos even, you know there's so much you can do with your curriculum that's going to make it real world. My daughter made a map the other day. She wanted to pretend we were going on a hike and she got a compass. And I said and we've talked about compasses before, we did you know north, south, east, west on maps? And I said, well, you need to draw a compass rose on your map so we know which way is north. And she was drawing a circle and trying to label it, like the compass she had in front of her and I thought, huh, I am going to use this as a teachable moment how the compass looks different. You know when it's on a map versus the one we're holding or looking at. You know in real life.
Joanna Meliti:So you know, just kind of taking real life experiences and making sure that you're diving into what it is that your child is struggling with, like number sense, for example. A lot of kids don't have number sense early on. So that's where there's like this deep understanding of numbers. So we get to like third grade and it's like my kid is really struggling with plate value. We have to step back, make sure they have number sense, do they have the deep understanding of how numbers work and so, yeah, when there's challenges happening at home, it's just it's really important to step back. What are some of the things that you can do to make it concrete, kind of address some of those early skills that might have been missed, so that everything is building. And that's the beauty of homeschooling and typical schooling. It's just, you know your traditional classroom, we're doing a lesson and we're moving, we're just going on with homeschooling. You can always step back and see, OK, what's missing. What do we need to kind of review and go deeper into before we try to build on those skills?
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, absolutely. That's very, very interesting and interesting about the number sense side of things too. I think my daughter is trying to figure out how numbers work now, where she's asking me how old I am all the time and how old Nana is, for example, and she gets confused because we both have a seven in our age, mine obviously being a lot younger than my mom's, since she's my mother, but she doesn't quite understand that yet.
Rebecca Twomey:So sometimes she'll say, mom, you're 70, and I'll say no, yeah, not 70, and try to explain to her that 70 is more than how old am I? 27.? And it's um, it's interesting because I can tell she's learning it. And the other day she asked me mom, how old are you? And I I was like you know, I'm going to say something different this time, let's test her. I said I'm six and she said no, you're not more than six. And then she said I was 70. And I'm like that's closer to the six. But you know, again, teachable moment. It's time for us to have that conversation again, because it does take time for them to make the connection with numbers that progress and they grow and, of course, especially as you're learning, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and up, yeah, so very interesting.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, and there's five main skills that go with number sense. And you say, well, there's so much technology. Now, you know, I can just pick up my phone and I always have. You know, I remember going to school and my teacher telling me you're not going to have a calculator to carry around with you, you know, when you're older, yeah, and what do we have now? We have a calculator on our phone. We can just pull out news.
Rebecca Twomey:So I don't know, I don't know about that, but honestly it's even worse because we could literally go on Google and say if you know what is 3% of 78, and it will tell us. We don't have to make the calculation, we can say it in words.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, yeah, and it's going to give us that answer, and we won't even know how it came to that answer. But exactly.
Rebecca Twomey:We won't know, we won't have the understanding the comprehension. We'll have the answer if, if it's giving us the right answer, we're depending on right.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, but the challenge with not solidifying those five main skills that come with number sense early on is it's not going to allow for the progress in other disciplines of math, so much like reading. We have this foundation we want to build and we want to grow and, you know, develop skills as we move into higher disciplines. But, yeah, so if families are seeing some learning challenges at home, you know, are we using an approach that best meets the child? You know, like we talked earlier on, are they more musical or are they more kinesthetic? Do they need to hop on hopscotch? You know, do we need to make a hopscotch and count by fives? Or, you know, are they more visual and want to move the bead, you know, on the number chart, so that they can make it more tactile and things like that.
Joanna Meliti:So, um, multiple intelligences is always great to look at. Piaget's um theory is great to look at, for you know the progression of development that kids go through, um and what that might mean for your approach as a mom. That's saying well, my kid's kind of struggling with something. What can I do to help them?
Joanna Meliti:You know, kind of look at where they are and there are certain curriculums I like only because you know they've done the research. They try to structure things so that kids don't have learning gaps, because I do think there are certain areas of education we want to be more intentional about addressing skills so that those gaps don't widen as they get older. And I think math is one of those you know very intentional about building that number sense and those skills as they go. And so for that reason I do like having a curriculum I work through for math.
Rebecca Twomey:What is, what are some of your favorites? I really like the good and the beautiful for math.
Joanna Meliti:Okay, yeah, I, I work primarily in the homeschool setting, at least with the littles. Um know, kindergarten first, second, ask me when we get to third. It may, but my daughter is so visual, she loves the stories. You know it'll have a girl's name and you know she's making a dress for her little sister, and so we need to see what patterns she needs for the dress, and so we'll give her pictures to choose from and she loves it. She looks forward to it.
Joanna Meliti:So I know it's working for her now as we move, you know, as she gets older her development and her interests will change and you know we'll navigate that with curriculum when it comes. But, um, I will say I pull in a lot of things during math to make it as concrete in her face as possible. Um, you know. So we're going to be working on number, teen numbers, going to make sure it's not just an auditory thing. You know we're seeing we're manipulating it in some way. But yeah, good and beautiful, they have some.
Joanna Meliti:The thing I reason I chose them for math especially is, um, they make sure that they meet kind of I know we don't teach the standards, so I don't want that to be misunderstood but they do make sure that, no matter where you live, if you use their curriculum for math, you're kind of addressing everything for your state when it comes to what learning needs to happen for that grade level. So it kind of lessens the chance of having a learning gap in math okay. So that's why I choose them. I know there's others that are just math u, c, the letter u, um, if you do have a dyslexic child, that's a great one for them. It's very black and white, there's nothing frilly about it, but it comes with a massive kit so that there's a lot the kids can work with. So if that appeals to a child, that would certainly be another great one that I always kind of lean towards.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay, awesome. Now what about when a child is struggling with reading? You know, do you have some steps that you could share with parents to determine if it's dyslexia another issue or maybe it's just? Like you said, everyone reads at a different time and space. Quick side note English is not the easiest of languages.
Joanna Meliti:No, it's not, and our brains have to be wired to learn to read. We are born and ready to learn language, like the spoken listening, but we have to literally create the pathways of the brain for reading, and so it's nothing to rush. You know, when we're teaching kids to read, it's so challenging, um for them, both cognitively, um perceptually, and it's such a big thing for them to have to learn at an early age that it can't be rushed. If we are building a firm foundation, we're doing the best we can with getting them where they need to be. I mean it really, when we think about the left and right side of our brains having to work together when we're reading, it's quite phenomenal how our, our bodies are designed and made.
Joanna Meliti:you know, when you look at it from an educational standpoint but, yeah, um, I kind of follow, you know I kind of a four-step process when we're looking at if a child is dyslexic, kind of want to check off some of the initial things first and then, if necessary, like that very last step is further testing. I was teaching phonics at my local library and we would have kids come in and I would. It's kind of similar to what I do with the pod on Monday, wednesdays, but it was a Tuesday morning class of 45 minutes and I would teach kindergartners for 45 minutes and then first graders and whatnot, and I had I sent lessons home with the families to work on during the week and one of the moms came to me and she said I didn't know, my kid couldn't rhyme. He had no rhyming skills. If we know any, we look at kind of some of the research. That is like the number one prerequisite to reading is making sure your child can rhyme. So those Dr Seuss books keep them going. Those are some of the best reading materials that you can pull out.
Joanna Meliti:So one of the first things I will talk to families about is do you have, does your child have, phonemic awareness? Can they rhyme? Can they separate sounds in words? Can they count and clap the syllables in words? Can we manipulate words so like, if we say airplane, can you say it without air? You know they're saying plane. Can we do some of those kinds of things? Can we count the number of words in a sentence? In other words, do they hear that break and understanding of words have their own place within a sentence?
Joanna Meliti:So first we look at do they have a solid foundation of phonological awareness? Because, much like a house, you have your foundation, which are your early learning and literacy skills, and then from there, if you think about like the walls going up, that's your phonemic awareness. So that's prerequisite to reading. We're not even at reading yet. We're building phonemic awareness. We're rhyming, we're playing word games, we're, you know, changing the first sound on words, asking for the first sound in a word. If I see cat, can you tell me the first sound? So we're really focusing on the walls of that house. Even the vowels, you know. Can you hear the vowel sounding cat? Can you tell me what the vowel sound is, the final sound in words?
Joanna Meliti:So just like a lot of manipulation with sounds and words and things like that, and then you move into phonics. That's kind of like your roof, and then you move into more of what you would find in like second, third grade of vocabulary, the structure of language. So those are kind of like putting your final pieces on your house. You know your doors, your windows, and then you're focused on fluency and comprehension. You don't want to move into fluency until the phonics and the phonemic awareness is strong, because without good foundation you're not going to have strong fluency. And then of course your comprehension breaks down too. So I'll talk to families and say, okay, do we have good phonemic awareness? Do we have those early reading skills? And um, then we say, well, yeah, they're rhyming, they can manipulate sounds you know, we have some of that there.
Joanna Meliti:So then I'll, okay, let's have an eye track test done, can we? Let's check the tracking of the eyes? Is everything kind of working okay there, um, and then you know, we kind of went over some of those things that you can kind of test at home if you want to try to see first at home before you, um, take them into an eye doctor. But then if you and I think doing eye tracking tests at home is great for any kid, even if you don't suspect it, just I think it's great to you know, work those muscles and things. But if you're not seeing any improvements after doing some of those eye exercises at home, the next thing we look at is retained primitive reflexes, and that's another big one. Yeah, I haven't heard of that one. Yeah, so it's kind of up there with the eye tracking in terms of like not talked about a lot. I had a student come in, he um, and he was holding his pencil with a full fist grip and writing, and on the first day, you know, I kind of just watched and observed. And then on the second day I went up to the mom and I said have you noticed? And she's like yes, she's like I was wondering if you're going to say anything. And so that is a palmer grasp reflex and that just means that, um, as a child, very young, infant toddler, he didn't lose his reflex and so that's how he grabs and holds his pencil and so it's going to impact pencil grip, fine motor skills, hand weakness, isolating fingers, hand-eye coordination, even like when he writes. There's like a mouth-hand connection, so his mouth will move when he's writing and he would chew on his shirt, so he'd put his shirt in his mouth and chew on it. And so a lot of times, you know, you start kind of with talking with maybe an OT or PT. If you go to a pediatrician, you can ask them and they can tell you what specialist to see. And so he went in and they are just doing exercises with his hand, basically stroking his hand a lot, trying to release that reflex. And there's others to release that reflex and um, there's others. There's um STNR and you can have if your child struggles with focusing or coordination. Um, you know, you can look for retained primitive reflexes and it's like one of those things like same with eye tracking. Why is not this not like a standard thing that we look for? I, I take my daughter to a pediatrician, um, you know, and we have certain choices within what we do there, but I feel like they should have, just like as she was developing, checked for those things, like if she retained her reflexes, because then early on we can address those and say this is going to turn into this later on, as they're trying to learn, you know, and hold pencils and um, and again there's things you can do at home to see is my child um retaining some of these reflexes? So back to like that w sitting. That's indicative of STNR and it's just a neck reflex.
Joanna Meliti:And you can have your child get on all fours, kind of like they would be like pretending to be like a horse or dog or something, and then you can hold their head so their arms are out straight. You know they're on all fours and you're moving their head up and down and as they're doing that you're looking to see if their elbows buckle and if they do, then it's possible that they've they still have that reflex. And then there's another one you can check to see left to right. If you do the same thing they're on all fours, move their head left to right, if their elbows buckle again, then that's ATNR. It's a different reflex and that's going to go along with their focus and coordination. Zombie test put your arms out in front of you. The kids put their arms straight out in front of them and you just move their head left to right and if their arms follow to the left or right as their head is turning, we call it the zombie test.
Rebecca Twomey:Oh, wow, that's interesting.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, and here's the interesting about that one 50% of kids that retain the ATNR reflex struggle with dyslexia.
Rebecca Twomey:There's a correlation there. There's a correlation.
Joanna Meliti:So, like I was saying earlier, we're just so quick to throw this label. Well, you know, kid is dyslexic because we just see those markers of oh, they're flipping letters, or you know, they can't copy from a list or whatever you know. You might see in that, when really there's so much more we can dive into before putting that label on them and then addressing those, it's like putting a a bandaid on this. Address this the cause, not the symptom. Why are those things happening? And so um.
Rebecca Twomey:Have you, or is chiropractic care something that you found benefit in? And I know that more people are starting to understand the fascia and fascia tightness. And again going back to pregnancy, right in the womb, how babies are born. I almost even wonder how the C-section rate might potentially influence this, or how babies are born, that a lot of babies are born under while mom's under the influence of pretty hard narcotics these days. So there's a lot of things running through my brain in in the why. Right now, obviously, it sounds like some of this is just we're not understanding it, but I also wonder what parts of some of these things might be preventable or salute. Easy solutions found earlier, right, like going to the chiropractor and doing facial release and stuff like that, yeah, I think the um, the c-section, is a big one.
Joanna Meliti:We the other one is um checking to make sure there's a lot of movement when the baby's developing making, because you know there's. I think theories are trying to answer a lot of that. Why, where is it coming from and are they being completely honest?
Rebecca Twomey:about what?
Joanna Meliti:they're telling us as to why certain things are happening. But if there's certain traumas that are happening, you know, even after birth, and we think about, you know C-sections and things. We hear a lot of things. Like you said, the narcotics, you know trauma to the baby, you know it doesn't always have to be a physical, it could be a neurological trauma, and so I there is some research to support that these retained primitive reflexes come from in utero, starting in utero. Is some research to support that these retained primitive reflexes come from in utero, starting in utero? So, seeing the chiropractor and making sure you've got healthy movement happening and things like that, but, um, you know, I've really my desire is to eventually become more into that. Why, why are things happening? You know?
Joanna Meliti:understanding the research behind that and I have such a passion to tell parents that these are things to look at first before just going with. You know, the label is my child's dyslexic. Or we have dysgraphia where kids struggle to write. You know they have here, they have it in their brain, but to get it from their brain, the signal at least from their brain to their arm, to their hand, to then write, we have what's called dysgraphia. Have we looked at primitive reflexes? Have we looked at, like you were saying, you know, chiropractic care? Are we looking to make sure that our body, our left and right hemispheres of our brain, are balanced? That's a whole, nother thing to dive into is balanced brains. So I think, yeah, there's a lot that comes to mind when we say you know, why are kids having these retained reflexes? But it was alarming to me that 50% of kids who have a retained reflex, the ATNR one, struggle with dyslexia.
Joanna Meliti:There's a correlation there, yeah, but there are activities I encourage families to. You know, kind of just look up reflexes and different activities you can do at home for each of them and also try out the different tests. You know, you can kind of just try them out for yourself. I do them on my dog all the time. You know, tell her one of them hold a toy in each hand, and I'm just like randomly throwing her head back, you know, as she got that reflex and she's sick. Just checking making sure as we develop that those reflexes are not there anymore. As she reads but, there's lizard.
Joanna Meliti:crawl is another great thing. I think even as adults, we should still be crawling.
Rebecca Twomey:Oh yeah, I crawled during pregnancy a lot because there's a lot of benefits to that, and then I mean after I got, because there's a lot of benefits to that, and then I mean after I got a crawl to pick up all these little toys.
Joanna Meliti:I think some of these things are just not for kids. You know, like I think, keep our brains working because, lizard crawl, you are manipulate, you're laying flat on your belly and you're manipulating your arms and legs while your head is turned. And let me tell you, it'll work your brain, like I think it's great for adults. But there's a game called Spot it and it gives you these cards and there's only one picture that's different from all the rest and you have to kind of find what that one picture is for both cards. And that's great for visual discrimination and kind of helping with those retained reflexes and things. So there's, yeah, there's a ton of things you can do at home. That's the beauty of this. It's not going to require intervention necessarily by a specialist. Like, families can support their kids and build that into their homeschooling day of I'm going to, you know, incorporate these exercises we do.
Joanna Meliti:Another one is a midline cross, one of my favorites. It's the easiest to do. Eventually my daughter will get into tennis just because of how much midline crossing happens during tennis. But, yeah, great sport for midline. But you can put a sticker on the back of each hand and they have to be two different kinds.
Joanna Meliti:Let's say you do like a heart on one hand and a star on the other. Well then you're going to do the opposite sticker to the leg. So you're going to do like right hand with a heart and then left knee with that same heart sticker, and then you're going to alternate so that the stickers are across your midline and you just make your kid stand and match that right hand to their left knee and tap it. And then you go left hand to right knee, tap it and you just keep going, tap across the midline. And it's great for brain development, like super easy. I'll do it with my daughter and with my kids in the pod when we're saying the alphabet. So we'll just cross midline A, b, c, so we're getting through our phonics and our midline crossing at the same time. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, so a lot of ways to incorporate it.
Joanna Meliti:There's a book. It's called Unlocking Potential Integrating Primitive Reflexes to Support Learning. I would recommend that to families. That's another great resource the doctor who put it out. He also has some courses on retained reflexes. So if it's something that families are wanting to know more about and kind of think that's something that they might see within their own child, there's tons and tons of resources out there on retained primitive reflexes and I think a chiropractor would be great to talk to about.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, cause I. I talked to my chiropractor about it as well. I'm kind of just getting his thoughts on his approach, and sometimes they'll just do a quick in office during an adjustment. You know, they kind of are on board with some of that too.
Rebecca Twomey:Fantastic, awesome. This has been such great advice so far. Keep going.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, I think when it boils down to, like you know, yes, when we homeschool, we don't technically have you know, a degree in education, but it doesn't.
Joanna Meliti:There's just these like highlights, these three things that, I think, just makes you a teacher, you know, when it comes to reading at least, and making sure that kids are getting what they need, and that's just make sure they have a really good phonemic awareness foundation. And then, after that, check eye tracking, retained primitive reflexes, and then, lastly, in this, at this point, we've explored a lot of different things. You know we've looked at curriculum, we've looked at approach to learning, we've looked at, you know, everything we've talked about. And then the last thing is do we want to do further evaluation? Do we want to see how the child learns? When we receive information, we have filing cabinets in our brain, in essence. We have filing cabinets in our brain in essence, and when that information comes into our brain, we're filing information so that later on, when we need to retrieve that information, our brain can go to that file, pull it out and give us what we need. What we've learned about some kids in their learning is that they don't always file it in the right place, and so when they go to retrieve it, it's not where it's supposed to be and they have to sort through a bunch of other files to get to what they need.
Joanna Meliti:And so when you're doing further testing and we call it a full battery, it's a psychoeducational evaluation, it's done by a psychologist and we'll do a group of tests and they're just looking at how your child learns. They're going to look at verbal and visual, they're going to look at memory speed how are we processing, how's your child processing information? And it's just kind of a window into how they're learning. And I've only, I think, my 15, 16 years of teaching I have recommended this test maybe half a dozen times. Okay, so there you know.
Joanna Meliti:To get to that point, we're saying, yeah, there's probably something we need to know more about, and we need to know more about, and we need to know what that is because, um, short-term memory is way easier to remediate than long-term memory. So we want to know is it a short-term memory remediation? Is it a visual discrimination thing that we have to work on? So it just kind of gives up that full, what we call full battery inside, inside, look into a kid's brain, and that's where you really get a lot of answers as to why certain things have happened after trying everything else. Mm-hmm, yeah, but that is costly. So I think that's, I'm sure.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, yeah.
Joanna Meliti:It's one of the reasons why we or at least as a full-time classroom educator, I was so hesitant to recommend it. They used to insurance used to cover some of the costs of having an evaluation done. Not so much anymore. But yeah, there's a point when you say I think we need to know more and that's where you would get the full test in.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay, and there's other types of therapies out there too. Perhaps that might be the first line of resource for children, right? I mean, I know that depending on what's going on, because this is down that line, but there may be other approaches. Like you said, you gave a bunch of examples of things that parents can do to try to figure things out first, but it sounds like, honestly, they should just call you and you can help them out, join your tutoring pods and you will practice and work on these things as they're learning. How about that?
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, because even if your child is dyslexic, it doesn't mean that you have to have that diagnosed to help them you know like we don't True. We just say, okay, we're going to do a Morton, gillingham based program. That's really what it boils down to for dyslexics.
Joanna Meliti:And it's a spiraling curriculum. So again it goes back to how many exposures does the child need to retain something? And that would be more on the scale of, you know, several hundred versus a kid. That's seven times. So we're going to find a curriculum that meets their need, despite whatever label or diagnosis they might get. So, yeah, yeah, like so. You're saying you know diagnosis they might get. So, yeah, yeah, Like so, like you're saying, you know there's so much we can do and just modify and tap into those resources and therapies to help, despite maybe not getting to the point of having a full evaluation done.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'd love to go back to your tutoring pods for a second because you obviously I'm sure people listening are like man, I'm in East Tennessee, I've got to, I've got to talk to Joanna and get up, get in on this about. We already talked about really the benefits of it for homeschooling families, but can you share a little bit about your contact and how people can reach out to you? Are you guys accepting people into your tutoring pods currently?
Joanna Meliti:Right now we have a wait list for our tutoring pods, um, and we advise our families that are interested to fill out a registration form, which is on our website.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay, um, and that's homes, home and school tutoringcom.
Joanna Meliti:That's right, okay, and there's a link at the top and it um, we'll take them to another platform where we do all of our registration and um documentation later on. You know like just contracts and things like that, but um, so it's at one platform that we use and they fill out a registration form and we'll add them to our wait list and then come next year when we go to open up spots. We always reach out to our families that have an application on file with us and then we don't advertise any positions unless there's some left after that. So we do have a public Facebook page that families can follow. We have a private one as well for our current families and that's where we kind of share photos and you know kind of day to day things. But our public one kind of just keeps everyone up to date on registration. We are interested in expanding and having the opportunity to offer this in other locations.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay. So if yeah, I love it. I love the concept and and if you're looking for the public Facebook page, it's facebookcom forward slash home and school tutoring, so you can go check out, like you said, the photos and different things that are there.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, and we would love to start connecting with moms who are teachers and may have an interest in doing this, and expanding this.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, I love that Awesome.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, there's values to having homeschool families have a resource in their area.
Rebecca Twomey:For sure, for sure. I'm sure a lot of people are going to be listening and saying, man, I wish I had something like this near me. So I'm sure that you people are going to be listening and saying, man, I wish I had something like this near me. So I'm sure that you know, as you continue to grow this, you'll continue to expand it. Now I have a couple of questions for you. Oh go ahead.
Joanna Meliti:Oh, I was just going to say we like to follow the multigrade kind of approach within our pods. So you know, keeping K1 together and things like that, because they learn from each other. And I had the other day where my first graders were learning to count on by three, from three more, from a number, and my kindergartners got to kind of watch in and learn and my first graders became those kind of teachers for the little kids, the kindergartners, and so we like to follow the multigrade approach because of what we were saying earlier on. You know society, we started with one room class schools and there were multiple grades in one school.
Joanna Meliti:And so there's so many benefits to that as well. So we like to, you know, take that approach and keep that in line with what we used to do as a society, because there's so much that comes from that.
Rebecca Twomey:But yeah, I love it, I love that. Well, I've got a couple final questions for you as we're wrapping up today. I'd like to ask real quick about kind of personalized learning and really how parents can individualize their child's learning experience at home, especially you know we've been talking about these learning disabilities and things of that nature. Especially you know we've been talking about these learning disabilities and things of that nature. And then perhaps any strategies that you know that might be helpful in building confidence in kids and not so much a focus on you have this learning disability. I don't know if how that cognitively impacts children, to think about it from that perspective versus I'm just learning. So thoughts on that.
Joanna Meliti:Yeah, one of the biggest things I like for young kids is to keep things very playful, learn through play so that, like we were saying earlier, they feel like they're playing but they're also learning. So individualizing it and where you know you're building on your own child's interests and then incorporating the learning through that. But if we look at kind of how the right and left brain work individually and then of course, together, there's some skills that the right brain kind of specializes in and there are activities that we can do for the right brain, and so if we want to individualize for our child and making sure we're developing the right hemisphere of our brain, then we're looking at making sports kind of a part of a child's day. Soccer is a great one to start out with. Um, it helps with spatial awareness, so we're aware of our surrounding, that there's other kids here. I'm living within my own space and someone else's space, um, so, yeah, soccer is great for that. Bike riding is great for the right hemisphere. Sensory play All these sensory bins became a big thing.
Joanna Meliti:Um, yeah, they sure have you know about, you know the colored rice with all the things that you know go into it. But, yes, a lot of sensory play, play-doh being outside, dress up, um, a lot of imaginative play, dancing, audio books, crafts, lots of movement. That's all going to help the right hemisphere of a child's brain. And so if you feel like you want to improve your child's creativity or mental math is right brain, creativity or mental math is right brain. So if we want to, you know kind of address that, then we're going to do the activities that go along with that, such as sports and outdoor play and charades and audiobooks and things like that.
Joanna Meliti:If you are looking to kind of develop the left side of your child's brain, there's a lot of research that says, you know, a balanced brain is when kids will be ready to learn to read. It correlates back to reading a balanced brain. So left hemisphere we're looking at like things like handwriting, symbols, so that'd be like letters and numbers, language, both spoken and written, reading, phonicsics, sequencing, following directions, so that's all left brain and things. For that you want to do memory games like legos, cooking, word searches. Those are good.
Joanna Meliti:If we truly think a child is dyslexic we would want to lean away from those just because of the way the letters will scramble and things like that. But the spotting game I mentioned earlier, those are great. Crocheting, stringing beads is good, and math games, puzzles, so that's all going to be helpful for the left brain. So you know, if you're kind of saying we need some help with handwriting and you know things like're kind of saying we need some help with handwriting and you know things like that, then there's activities you can do to build that side of the brain. And that's the beauty of homeschooling is we're going to be recognizing so much earlier on what a child needs and individualize that child?
Joanna Meliti:Yes, so there's I mentioned PIJ earlier and kids will do so much better with their learning if they can do it rather than just hear about it. Individualize, you know, just making sure that your child is ready and if they're ready to learn something, that you're making sure that they have the opportunity to do it and we're not just like talking about it from a textbook.
Joanna Meliti:I just remember in the classroom teaching about um volcanoes from this book, you know it's just book and we're reading about it and we're looking at these pictures but, um, making it so that it becomes real to them in some way. And so building those volcano structures, you know getting their hands messy with that play-doh and and plaster or whatever. You know making it so that they can kind of get their hands on it. So, going along with PI Jade's theory, that is, there are certain levels of learning that kids move through. The first one is ages zero to two, and then the other one is three to seven, and then I think the last one is eight to 11 in terms of ages, and they move through these levels and kids have to master one before they can move into the next one. And there's some.
Rebecca Twomey:You know those numbers are very fluid.
Joanna Meliti:Of course, kids don't stay within those parameters, but we want to make sure that when the brain is developing and we're doing activities with our kids and seeing where there's opportunity for growth, we're thinking about, you know, are we creating experiences that are helping them move through those levels? Um, and then kids learn from each other too. So, you know, taking them to the playground and play dates and things, they learn so much from each other. I one day this summer, my daughter was talking to some kids she saw on the playground and she was telling them about cicadas. You know, we had that huge influx of cicadas this year and the little boy was like I say what, oh what? And so she went into great detail about cicadas and putting how they um recreate and that's hilarious.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, he goes home. You'll never guess what I heard today yeah, so thanks to my husband that's hilarious yeah, so yeah it's
Joanna Meliti:great um. But if you are looking to kind of just very simple and easy ways to support your child and kind of build their confidence, if you're noticing that they're struggling with handwriting or can't recall how to write a letter or number, it's great to have a. You can make it at home just a strip, a long strip with all the letters of the alphabet, uppercase, lowercase, together, right across that strip, from left to right, and so anytime they're writing, just have that strip out in front of them and so they have this to go to when they're writing. So it's not this, you know again, abstract recall call. And then by seeing it visually as they're writing, you're giving them that exposure. You know if they are that child that needs to see it a hundred of hundreds of times before it's stored into that file in their brain. That I remember. A, b goes this way versus a, d, um. So alphabet strips are great for um handwriting. There's also lots of cute little sayings for how we write our letters or numbers, like you know, three around the tree around the tree, or five. There's like little short, little, like poems, you know, with the belly in the hat, so just kind of verbal cues, something that makes it fun, and more It'll stick a little bit better, more it'll stick a little bit better.
Joanna Meliti:Um, and then I would say any, and this would be like a general term that most kids through second grade I think you want to approach every math lesson with some kind of manipulative. So if you're doing tally marks, we're using popsicle sticks or even toothpicks. Math, we're using counters or some manipulative where they can manipulate two plus three and put those together or subtract. And for subtraction, you can roll up balls of dough, play-doh, and they can squish the ones that they're subtracting. So five minus three, squish the ones that they're subtracting. So five minus three, you know, squish the three that they're subtracting.
Joanna Meliti:But a good rule of thumb is, through second grade and I would argue, maybe even later but they would have a manipulative for every math lesson so that they have something tactile to solidify, because they're kind of in that concrete stage where they're not very good at thinking things abstractly. They need to have it in front of them. So that'll, you know, really build kids confidence because they'll feel like they have some kind of support, something to rely on and use, um, when they're not feeling like they are confident you know to do it on their own yeah.
Joanna Meliti:So a lot of visuals, a lot of hands-on, that will build confidence for kids. Even finger spacing between words, you know that's a big thing. Trying to and it correlates to reading too, when we're writing sentences is to put spaces between words, and so sometimes we say finger space, so while they're writing with their right hand or left hand, the other hand is helping to space the words. So you put your finger down and you know they can put that space between the two words. If you want to be creative, you can get a little spaceman puppet or print out a spaceman and put him on a popsicle stick and he's the space, you know, between the words.
Joanna Meliti:So there's fun things. So you know it's the words. So there's fun things. So you know it's always been. My approach is, if there's something that's really challenging or what goes far to say challenging and frustrating, there's always something out there that can help. You know there's, there's, there's something you can do that will help that kid not feel so frustrated in that moment. Sure, like a hundred chart for math would be another good thing to have out.
Rebecca Twomey:Say that again A hundred chart, a hundred chart.
Joanna Meliti:Okay, so some of those resources just kind of out and available for whenever they need to write, like you were saying earlier with your daughter.
Rebecca Twomey:Is this a seven number? That would help her to not think that I was 70 for sure. I think I need to get a number chart out and I also I don't have a letter chart. Like you said, the you know the alphabet out when she's practicing her writing and I do think that that would be very helpful.
Joanna Meliti:So I'm just absorbing right now all of this amazing information you're sharing my daughter has a hard time remembering her team numbers, but it's like one, six, one, seven, and so I have just labeled the stairs, just recently, of our house, and we have 19 stairs going up to our second floor. So every step has a index card that I just wrote down, so as you go up, we can see it, we can count it, and then what's even better is we can count backwards with that too, because counting backwards like if you're teaching your kid to count forward from one to 10, teach them at the in the same moment from 10 to one, because, just as important as it is to count forward, we want to teach kids how to count backwards too. Um, so, yeah, there's, yeah, moments when, as your child's teacher, you're just saying, okay, this isn't working. How can I help them? How can I support them? Because no kid is ever going to go into a lesson and purposely make it challenging for themselves. They're never going to give pushback and you know be, you know give me a hard time about it because they want to. It's indicative of something underlying. You know they don't feel confident, they feel like it's overwhelming. Something underlying, you know they don't feel confident, they feel like it's overwhelming.
Joanna Meliti:Um, I made a checklist for my daughter because, you know, to get through our she does piano and so to get through like these are our main goals for today. Just so she can see, and it's not overwhelming. We can check things off as we go and that for another kid that's maybe in fifth or sixth grade and they have a big sheet of math work to do, fold the sheet in half or cut it in half and only show a portion of that so it's not overwhelming, you know, break it into smaller tasks and chunks. So if you ever feel like you're getting pushed back or it's just, you know, not enjoyable, just step back, even if you have to take a day off and say what can I change, what can I do differently, that's going to give my child that little extra support.
Joanna Meliti:Or you know why is it overwhelming to them. A lot of times when we do math, kids will give us an answer and it's wrong. Oh, no, it's wrong. Erase it and fix it. Or I want to hear how did you get to that answer? Have them explain their approach and their thought process. So then you know exactly where it is, that you know quote it's gone wrong and you can help them.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, I love that. I love that you have given so much incredible advice so far. My kind of last questions for you would just be any additional tips that you want to share, especially for those that are potentially new to homeschooling and kind of unsure, or you know, how can parents encourage and or feel encouraged during these challenging times, and just anything else that you want to share with us today.
Joanna Meliti:Um, I would encourage families to reach out to an expert, someone that they can talk to you know even knowing what I know every opportunity I have.
Joanna Meliti:If I'm in the room with someone who I can just glean a little bit from you know, I'll ask questions and get information, but a lot of times, consultations. There's a lot of specialists offering free 15 minute consultations and they're doing them by zoom and it, you know, just reach out. There's a lot of Instagram accounts that have information about the primitive reflexes and the eye tracking and things like that, and if you find an account you like or a person by way of recommendation cause I do have a place in Knoxville that I always recommend my families to for eye tracking Um, so if anybody wants to reach out, I can give them the information. But, um, talk to an expert, you know, just ask questions, maybe see about getting some free consultations and it'll kind of just get the ball rolling. It'll answer some questions you might have and then kind of maybe give you a next step, something else to look into.
Joanna Meliti:And also, parents are their child's biggest cheerleader. We are meant to be their cheerleader. Let someone else do the hard work of addressing what challenges are there. And so, if that's by way of taking them to some kind of therapy or having the other person be the one to say, you know, your child has a, you know, eye tracking challenge and we're going to do vision therapy at home, let that person be the one to say, well, they're not, you know, going to be able to just do six weeks. They're going to need three months or whatever it might be.
Joanna Meliti:But you're cheerleading your child through that. You're cheering them through what it is that they're being challenged with, um, because we want to build the confidence in our child, because, um, there's going to be a lot that they go through, especially if they have learning challenges. They're doing the best they can. I can't tell you how many times I have parents sitting down and telling me how frustrated they were because their kid wouldn't read or didn't want to read or were challenged, and they would get frustrated and I'd say they're not doing it on purpose, they're not wanting you to feel that way. They just don't know how to communicate. A lot of times with vision, a kid's not going to tell us I can't quite see that the way I think I'm supposed to you know?
Joanna Meliti:Sure, yeah, and it's the same thing with their brain, with learning challenges. They can't communicate that. You know what? I think this is harder than it should be. They just know that it's hard, and so we just encourage our kids that when we are growing, we are facing challenges and when we're making mistakes we're learning. And, much like you know, you have to have rain and you have to have sun to make a rainbow. So we're going to have the good and the bad and we're going to work through it together.
Joanna Meliti:And so, yeah, I love it your child's cheerleader.
Rebecca Twomey:I love that. Yes, such great advice. Thank you so much for everything that you have shared today. You are such a wealth of knowledge. I have personally learned so much today and so many things I need to digest and I can't wait to start applying with my own kids. So thank you.
Joanna Meliti:You're welcome and if anyone wants to reach out yeah, what's the best way for them to reach? You Home and school tutoring at gmailcom. They can email me and I can either send out resources that they may need or kind of steer them in the right direction. I yeah, I'm not a psychologist, so I don't treat and diagnose. I just, you know, I am there to support and help in any way possible.
Rebecca Twomey:But yeah, awesome. And if you'd like to find Joanna online, you can find her at homeandschooltutoringcom or on facebookcom forward slash home and school tutoring, and thank you so much for tuning in and being on this journey with us. If you would like to follow along outside the podcast, you can do so on Instagram and Facebook at the Radiant Mission, and, of course, you can watch this in video format on YouTube. And today we are going to close with Proverbs 22, verse 6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. We're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone.
