Dyslexia Games by The Thinking Tree (A Review)
I have been working (slowly) through my piles of curriculum and school things and today I came across a resource I have used with all of the kids that I really like a lot! So… I wanted to share it with you!
First, a little context.
I’m not getting paid anything to promote this resource. I hope to be ramping up my review games in the future, so there’s a chance that will change. But I’ll always tell you if I receive something from my review, and for this one… I’m just one mama telling another mama this is something we’ve used and liked.
Next, I don’t have kids that have been officially diagnosed with a learning disability. However, I do have late readers and those kids have told me that sometimes the letters “dance on the page,” so I’ve been aware we might have some issues and have tried to find resources that will help. (Allowing an iPad mini with the Kindle app on it for reading has been a GAME CHANGER for one! We can set it to the “dyslexia” font and suddenly she’s become a reader for enjoyment!)
Several years ago I saw the Dyslexia Games on a facebook advertisement. At the time they were running a special so I bought the whole set. Over the course of the years since then I have repeatedly printed these books from the downloaded pdf file for the kids and they work through them at their own pace.
The author of the Thinking Tree books is a homeschooling mom who had a dyslexic child who needed a bit of a boost to make learning happen in her home. Does that sound familiar to anyone else?!
As I understand the research, some of the problem that occurs with dyslexia is engaging the left and right sides of the brain. The dyslexia game workbooks have the students study and recognize a pattern, then continue that pattern across the page, forcing them to pay attention to the details.
Here’s a blurb from their website:
“Dyslexia Games … workbooks begin with ART, Puzzle Games and many 3D drawings… The Puzzle Games activate the right brain and over time the games begin to introduce symbols, letters and numbers – as part of the art! The art and puzzles gradually transform into reading activities and over the course of 2 to 3 months, depending on the pace of the student, the right brain takes over the job of reading!”
In my opinion, the patterns themselves are engaging. Our kids have incorporated them into the different doodles they do on their own time as artistic flourishes.
As I mentioned, since I purchased a pdf download years ago, I’ve been able to print the workbooks repeatedly for each child as it’s been appropriate. It doesn’t take long at all for the kids to complete the pages – we usually 1-2 pages per day – and they enjoy it!
The Thinking Tree actually has many more books available that I’ve been tempted by but haven’t actually committed to purchasing. Some of the titles that are of particular interest (because of the interests of our kids) are Time Travel History – Fashion Dreams from their Fun Schooling line and the Nature Study and Outdoor Journal. I’m sure over time they will end up in our library… so I look forward to that!
In researching their webpage for this post, I also discovered they have a whole series on Math Craft that I’m going to spend more time exploring as well, since trying to figure out ways to show the beauty of math has been a hot topic in my thoughts this summer!
So there you have it! If you have been looking for something like this I’d recommend it for a non-painful way to tap into that brain training!
Dyslexia Games by The Thinking Tree website, click here.