A reason for shares in blutack.

Three weeks into home educating Sam and the gaps in his very early learning are becoming increasingly clear.  When he started at school he already knew most of the letters and sounds of the alphabet, could form letters correctly, could write his name and easily count past 30, possibly to 100 but I can't remember clearly enough to say that with certainty. He was above average in both maths and English.
By the end of the foundation stage (reception to us oldies) he was still working at just above average in most areas but his reading was only average.  He still enjoyed writing and reading and loved maths.  Maths was still a strong point and was still above average. 
By the end of year 1 he was below average in every area. By Christmas in year 2, he had almost fallen off of the bottom of the scale in English. His maths was barely average.
This was all happening to a little boy who is obviously bright.  He talks about his interests with passion and has a good vocabulary and general understanding.  He questions things around him and often poses philosophical questions that most adults can't answer. In January we started home educating him to redress the situation.  
Amongst other things, we suspected that Sam may well be dyslexic as both his father and I are.  I was diagnosed with moderate dyslexia in my third year of university and managed fairly well despite it, whereas his dad was diagnosed with severe dyslexia as a child and once it was addressed, went through education up to PhD level. We have started to have Sam tested privately for dyslexia.  Although the tests are not complete yet and the score may increase, they are so far confirming what we thought. As things stand at the moment, he is already coming out with a verbal IQ of 123, a visual IQ of 127 and a general IQ of 128.  Not bad.  Meanwhile, his reading so far is coming out at 86 and his naming speeds at 88, clear underachievement compared to his other scores and highly suggestive of dyslexia. We will hopefully finish the tests later today and receive the full report within a week or so.
With all of this in mind I decided to go right back to basics with English and discovered that Sam has big gaps in his early phonetic sounds. This is where the above photo comes in and why I may benefit from shares in blutack! Having realised he doesn't recognise the first 100 sight words  (something that should be complete by the end of foundation) nor is he familiar with all of the phase three phonic sounds despite him supposedly being on phase 5 at school, we have gone back to filling the gaps. The first 100 sight words are now printed out on planets and are blutacked around his bed - a task that involved about 2 hours of cutting out and about 30 mins of sticking them up!  Hopefully, this will start to have an impact as they become familiar. We have gone back from band 5 reading books, which Sam hated and struggled with most words,  to band 2.  Sam is now having success with his reading and is starting to enjoy it again. He is attempting harder books because he wants to, something he hasn't done in over a year, and successfully managed to read 2 of the books from his bookshelf from beginning to end - with a little help.  He has started to apply his newly addressed phonic knowledge to his spellings and on Thursday finally cracked a few spellings.
He has started on some areas of maths from the year above what he was doing at school and has managed fine, without even realising that it was at a higher level.  
I am very aware that there are many gaps in his existing knowledge but we will fill the gaps and build on some more solid foundations and I am confident that he will start to catch back up with his peers and one day maybe overtake them! 
3 weeks in and so far... so good. :-)