I have some thrilling news to share with you! Learning Tools has relocated from the beloved Seattle location to a bright, sunny office in Bothell. This move marks an exciting new chapter for Learning Tools, and I can’t wait to welcome you to the new space.

Why the Move?

Seattle has been a fantastic home for Learning Tools, but I wanted a location that offers even more convenience for my clients. The new Bothell office is just off the 405, making it easily accessible for everyone on the east side and the North End. Whether you’re coming from Bellvue, Redmond, Woodinville or Mill Creek you’ll find that getting to to Learning Tools is now quicker and more straightforward.

The New Office

The new office space is a bright, sunny environment that’s perfect for learning and creativity. This is a positive and vibrant atmosphere which is crucial for effective learning, and the new location offers just that. I am confident that you’ll love the new space as much as I do.

Special Offer: 10% Discount

To celebrate the move, I am offering a special 10% discount on any first or second program you enroll in this summer or fall. Just mention this blog post when you sign up to take advantage of this limited-time offer. Whether you’re looking to enhance your reading or math skills or learning concepts for life, now is the perfect time to reach out and schedule yours or your child’s program.

Looking Forward

I are incredibly excited about this move and the opportunities it brings. My commitment to providing top-quality educational programs remains stronger than ever. The new location allows me to serve clients better and continue offering the exceptional learning experiences you’ve come to expect from a Davis Program.

Thank you for your support. I look forward to seeing you at the new Bothell office soon!

Warm regards,
Sophia Goebel
Owner & Facilitator at Learning Tools

P.S. Don’t forget to mention this blog post to receive your 10% discount on your next program!

The post Learning Tools has Moved to Bothell! appeared first on Learning Tools.

I was recently asked by a parent, “why should I pay for a program for my son?”

She said she made it through school and in life without such a program and she believes she is dyslexic.  She knows grades are not everything….  she knows how smart her child is and that is all that matters.

Here was my answer to her.

1. If your son wants help and wants to improve

   If your son wants help and wants to improve, a program can offer him concrete ways to do that.

2. Helps with self-esteem

   For me, my son’s self-esteem was why I looked into doing a program.  It broke my heart to hear him call himself “stupid” and to see him compare himself with other kids. After the program, this rarely happened.  My son began to see his strengths and was proud of those, this is also what the majority of parents tell me when we do follow-up after the program.

3. Allows your child to be in control of his learning

   Being in control of your own learning so powerful! Students learn and are able to recognize when they are disoriented or confused and need to focus.

   Often students I work with are very good at concentrating, but heavy concentration without the mind focused just causes more confusion, more work, and can be painful. Dyslexics need to ensure they understand the difference of focus and concentration, when they know how to focus and stop just tyring to concentrate hard, learning becomes easier.

4. Possibilities

   When I see a student really embrace what they have learned and learn how their brain works, they get excited by all the possibilities available to them. Some might get excited about acknowledging their creative sides, or that their ability to see things from a different perspective and how this can help solve problems in the world.  They love that their imagination allows them to discover things that others don’t necessarily see and stop seeing themselves as dumb, slow, or challenged.

5. A faster result

   A Davis® program is working with thelearni ng and thinking style of the individual and teaching them to use this style to their advantage.

   With tutoring, often they are just being “retaught” material with the same methods used in school but at a slower pace.  These methods are for those who think with verbal conceptualization and taught with a lot of repetition, drill, and rote memorization.

   When tutors do teach with other methods and use multi-sensory learning it can be positive but also can often take a long time which makes for very slow progress and they end up having years and years of tutoring which ends up costing them close to the same amount or even more than having done the Davis program.

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Fall 2019 NewsLetter

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Spring News 2019

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The definition of focus when used as a verb means to direct one’s attention or efforts.  

How do you feel when you are unable to focus?

Have you ever felt that you were:

• all “in your head” or so fuzzy and dizzy you just were not able to say what you wanted to say?
• or maybe you just want to concentrate and read the book that you had in front of you because you were exhausted from a busy day? But there’s so much going on that you couldn’t read, instead you heard the birds outside and then the train passed and then kids are playing and screaming and your dog got upset and started barking so there was just no way you could read?
• or how about you have an important paper to write and you know the information but you just couldn’t write what you wanted to write?

Each additional noise, or distraction increases the inability to focus and concentrate. Being able to focus is a skill; a skill that most of us take for granted.

Dyslexics have a low threshold for confusion, so they have a more difficult time focusing. To add to this low threshold of confusion thy have a unique ability of perception that allows them to see and experience things that aren’t common for those who use verbal conceptualization or “words” as their main means of thinking. A dyslexic’s perceptual ability actually creates what we call disorientation as in the senses are not aligned. When in disorientation, the ability to focus can feel unobtainable and usually takes removing oneself from the situation to refocus again.

For me, before I was given specific tools to get myself into a focused state, I needed to feel grounded and then I could focus, but without the feeling of being grounded, my ability to focus was severely handicapped. I would try to focus and remember my mind racing in class to find the words or answers I needed. I would make errors or be confused or was unsure of what I read and the harder I would try, the more frustrated and stupid I felt.

Without specific tools to get focused, one might have to get up and walk away from what they are doing, take a walk, try meditating, or listening to music.   It just depends on the person, but when they are a kid in school, they have to try to concentrate harder, which is exhausting and often doesn’t work. If they look out the window or start doodling on their page, they are given all sorts of labels, like lazy, unmotivated, or ADD/ADHD.

Not being able to focus means not being able to learn. So I believe good focusing tools are the key to success. The Davis® methods do a fabulous job of giving students a quick and easy way to focus. The intensive program is the perfect way to be in a safe place with a facilitator who is an expert on detecting disorientation. The facilitator can point out and help guide the student to times they need to use their focusing tool so they master their ability to focus quickly, easily, and at will.

The post The Importance Of Focus appeared first on Learning Tools.

I have often referred to my clients and dyslexics as picture thinkers. But what exactly is a picture thinker? A picture thinker is someone who thinks primarily in pictures instead of the sound of words (verbal conceptualization). In the US it is estimated that 20% of the population think primarily in pictures (non-verbal conceptualization). Those with dyslexia, auditory processing, attentions issues like ADD/ADHD are people who are picture thinkers. Picture thinking is evolutionary, meaning it grows as the thought process adds more concepts. It is subliminal, and it is extremely fast, possibly thousands of times faster than verbal conceptualization.

For someone who is a picture thinker and has difficulty with reading, the challenge they face is that the word they are trying to read doesn’t have a natural picture for them, words such as: of, else, it’s, how, and sure. The picture thinker draws a blank and can’t “think” with that word. We call the words with no pictures “trigger words” and there are 217 common to dyslexics.

In this sentence: “The brown llama has gone over the stone fence and left the pasture.” The following words don’t have pictures that come to mind for most dyslexics: the, has, gone, over, and left. What they are then left with is brown, llama, stone, fence, and pasture. Using only these words, the meaning of the sentence is not clear.

With time, the dyslexic might learn how to read the word but the comprehension can become quite difficult. As they continue in school coping methods evolve where the dyslexic can pick up the gist of the meaning, but often really important information is lost. These coping methods might include: guessing or making something up, reading someone’s face and body language if they are reading with them, imagining by looking at the pictures, continuing reading to help with their guess, or giving up reading altogethLet’s

Lets take an example of how a picture thinker who struggles more with auditory processing might have challenges. These are those people who have a really difficult time following directions. Let’s say a mom is with her dyslexic son is at her office and he wants to help her out. She tells her son “Billy, please go get me the tape I was using earlier, it is on the desk in the other room down the hall. He hears: Billy please tape using desk room hall. There are a number of things that he could have thought she meant, but he heads off and comes back a few minutes later looking confused saying “mom, there is no desk in the hall.” He has completely forgotten he was looking for tape and instead searched for a desk in the hall.

As you can imagine, the best way to work with someone who is having a hard time following directions is to ensure you have “painted a picture” for them when asking for directions. But when it comes to reading and I mean reading for comprehension, another approach is needed. The dyslexic needs to first be focused and then they need start coming up with creative pictures for each of the words they do not know. In Davis® dyslexia programs the student “masters” words & symbols” by creating them with clay to make the words clear.

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