Also, there’s this website that teaches Russian letters, words, math, geography, riddles and some other fun stuff: www.solnet.ee/school/index.html
The website is a bit amateurish, but it’s very simple and kids love it.

Please keep teaching them Russian! Don't give up!

Your kids will appreciate that later on in their lives. I’ve met a lot of young people (college students) who came from multicultural families (mostly with Eastern European background). Those kids whose parent gave up and let them become completely absorbed by English language all said “I wish my parents thought me/insisted on learning Russian/Ukrainian/etc.”

You’re not taking anything away, you are only adding! You can find and buy many wonderful children’s books online now (I know that www.ruskniga.com/ is based in NY and ships within U.S.)
We’re teaching our 6 year old Russian language and while English is definitely more dominant language for her, she’s fluent in Russian and starting to read as well.

Good luck!

I would consider ordering phonics materials from ABeka publishing. They are one of the largest suppliers of curriculum to protestant Christian School and homeschool families. I would purchase the hanbook for reading, accompanying audio CD of the sounds, and their 1st grade readers.

The program is based on Noah Websters "blue back speller" in which children learn vowels, rules for long and short, and sound the common letter blends make. The readers follow the handbook by working on the basic shoulds and building on each concept.

The materials can be viewed at www.abeka.com or by calling their customer service department.

Best regards

dobre den

My twins were adopted from Russia as well. We also suspect some fetal alcohol effects. I agree with healthy11's recommendations for tutoring programs. but I would also suggest that you start requesting testing for learning disabilities from the school or privately. Our experience has been that things keep showing up as the years go by and school gets more challenging.

Another option is to find an Educational Therapist to work with your child and help advocate for you. There is a locater function at this web-site:

www.aetonline.org/

I don't want to scare you by saying that there will be further problems down the line, but we've found that the sooner any problems are addressed the better. And we've never been proactive enough due to our ignorance.

It might be a bit harder to tease out what's going on if your son is still struggling with English. Is that the case? Perhaps there's some difficulty with language processing.

Off topic, are you keeping up your son's Russian at all? We've tried to do so with our girls, and it's pretty difficult. but we did use a Russian lady for our babysitter when they were small, and found a Russian Sunday school that they attended for several years. So they can, with some difficulty, sound out some simple Russian reading and speak some basic household Russian.

paka

Thanks much for the reply... I've just signed on to the group you've referenced. Appreciate the feedback and look forward to my participation on this site.

I would first like to invite you to join other parents whose children have reading and other learning disabilities in Greatschools Learning and Attention Difficulties Group at community.greatschools.net/groups/11554

While I don't have personal experience with FAS, I know that most people recommend multisensory language instruction for kids who struggle with reading, no matter what the reason. Sylvan and Huntington Learning are NOT the best tutoring centers for children with actual LD's, although they may be adequate for kids who just have gaps in their learning... Multisensory reading instruction methods most often mentioned included Barton, Wilson, Orton-Gillingham (O-G) and Lindamood Bell (LMB) While LMB is very expensive, and generally only offered through their own centers, I've heard very few people say that it hasn't been worthwhile. If you are inclined to tutor yourself, Barton seems to be the most widely used of the multisensory approaches. When you join community.greatschools.net/groups/11554 you'll find more parents who can tell you about it...