Just want to pipe in about the vision issue - we had a similar experience with the pediatric opthamologist. I took all three of my older kids in for a general checkup, and he found nothing wrong with any of them (and he was irritated besides, that we were there without specific concerns). A few weeks later, coincidentally, we took DD6 to be tested at the Gifted Development Center. Her results indicate that she is 2E. The testers recommended, among other things, that her vision be checked by a behavioral optometrist, for two reasons: first, the way she did some of the block designs - when it got to the harder ones, the answers would have been correct if they had not been skewed, or turned to one side.
The second reason was that we did not indicate that DD is very good at puzzles (I think I indicated that she likes them, or is good but not very good, or something like that - I can't recall the exact language of the form), and they said that she is such a visual-spatial learner that she would likely be very good at them unless she has a vision issue. I'm not sure I buy that, but thought you might find that interesting, lsa, considering your DD's apparent difficulty with the puzzles in the classrom - could just be a vision thing (I apologise if I'm misreading anything, I haven't read this entire thread yet).
The behavioral optometrist indeed found a problem with our dd's eye tracking/teaming, and we have about 7 weeks to go of vision therapy (I cannot wait till it is over!!! It's so irritating to get her to do it, though it got so much easier after she finished OT - the OT had said it would help the ocular motor stuff, but I wasn't holding my breath, and it turned out to make a huge difference in her ability to do the vision exercises). She has shown great improvement with reading, finally.
I don't know about the puzzle thing - I haven't bought any new ones in quite a while. My other VSL likes puzzles well enough, though again I can't say he has some kind of vastly superior ability with them or super love of them, and he's already been checked by a behavioral optometrist (he was admittedly non-verbal at the appointment, and being younger the evaluation was different). I do plan to have him re-checked again this summer, but it doesn't seem like he has problems with his vision. I guess you never know...
Interestingly, both my brother and I have similar vision issues to dd - I suppress the vision from my right eye quite a bit when I read because, like it was for dd before therapy, they do not focus on the same point, or at least not close enough together - it's like they're looking at slightly different sections of the text. At least I know where dd gets it from. Her vision is now better than mine! I can't even do half the exercises she does - I'm just too old.
Good luck with the homemade therapy. I scanned in the first couple weeks of vision exercises so I'd have them for future reference, but never got around to doing that for the rest of them (we have a 24-week program).
And by the way, it's no secret that there is controversy about vision therapy, since most opthamologists don't "believe" in it, and the optometrists who do it are a bit defensive about it, arguing that opthamologists only think things can be fixed with surgery, or something like that. It seems like everything I do for myself and my family these days has an element of controversy...
