Has anyone tried the Toe by Toe book? Is it any good?

[StaceeJaxx]

I had a meeting today with a lady from a local special needs school about dd1. (She's 9, has ASD and reading, writing and maths level of a 6 year old). One of the things she recommended was the Toe by Toe book. It has great reviews on Amazon. Has anyone here used it and would recommend it, or has bad views on it?

I would recommend it. DS2 was three years behind in reading (at least) until we did it. It took ages but was very simple and only 15 mins a day. Basically DS had not got to grips with phonics at the same speed as his classmates and ended up memorising words. He would guess new words very inaccurately and was stuck with very easy, babyish books (he is a bright lad, keen to read about all his interests). Toe by Toe taught him how to decode new words and he ended up leapfrogging over his classmates to the top reading group and his teachers raised their expectations of him, his spelling improved due to the increased reading he was doing (still spells phonetically mind you). I think we spent around 18 months doing it in the end, and went for a treat day out to celebrate finishing it.

It's the only "dyslexia" remedy I have tried that really worked.

Moondog recommends a computer programme called Headsprout but it is much more expensive and I think computer programmes teaching phonics can cause confusion if the accent of the programme is too different from the accent used at home (at least it did for DS as we are Scottish, I am now having fun helping with French homework as DS is at high school now).

DS is behind his class - has dyspraxia so diff learning difficulties. Anyway he is behind in maths and english, and we started kumon just before summer - it has made a very real difference to him, in that time.....but it is not cheap 100 quid a month for both english and maths.
He went from doing year 1 work last year to year 3 work this year....part of it is just the confidence it has given him.

There is also Dancing Bears and Bear Necessities which are worth a google.