Heads Up

Heads Up! is a company designed to provide expert information and products for special needs children. Our items have been selected to accommodate various learning styles and strengths, regardless of curriculum used. These special needs products have been found to be especially helpful for children who are distractible or hyperactive.
(Taken from the Heads Up! website.)

I received a variety of frames designed to help distractable children maintain focus on the page.

	Top of the Line reading aid
	Double Time reading aid
	4 x 9 inch and 4 x 4-1/2 inch frames
	Reader

I tried out these products with my 6 year old son. He is a constant motion machine, and we have been struggling with learning to read this year. One of the things that I had struggled with was actually getting him to look at the page. I would spend a lot of time pointing to the word he was supposed to be reading. He has not been able to grasp the concept of putting his finger UNDER the word that he is reading and instead tries to put his finger ON the word. Obviously, that doesn’t work, since neither of us can see through his finger.

I began by using the regular reader with him. I chose to use blue because it is his favorite color, and he frequently reminds everyone that blue is his favorite color. I noticed an immediate improvement in his ability to track on the page. By blocking out the rest of the text, he was able to focus better on what he was reading. One thing that I didn’t like about the reader was it was difficult to hold it exactly right in his books. He is still reading books with very large print, so the colored space is just barely big enough to go over the line. I found that, for that reason, I much prefer the Double Time reader. It is designed to read 2 lines of text, but for the beginning phonics readers it is about the size of one line.

I also sent some of these to my sister to help me to evaluate. She is a special education teacher, so she works with special needs children. She also likes the products and reported that her students all thought they were “cool”.

Though I am using the readers every day, I haven’t found much to use the larger frames for at this point. I think they would be ideal for putting in a textbook to highlight the portion that the student is working on. However, my 6 year old is only using workbooks, so he needs to write in the area that he’s focusing on. I will definitely be holding on to the larger frames to try as he gets older.

I found the products page at Heads Up! to be filled with very helpful and interesting looking products. In addition to the reading aids that I tested, they have products designed to help students with ADD/ADHD, sensory issues, gross and fine motor skills, and autism. If you have a special needs child, you definitely need to look at what they have to offer.

Disclosure: I received this product to review as a member of the Homeschool Crew. All opinions expressed are my own. I was not compensated for this post.