Special Needs
Children with special needs, including ADD/ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other situations, can thrive in a homeschool environment. Parents find that support and encouragment from other parents and organizations goes a long way towards a success home education experience. We've compiled the best resources for parents as they educate their special needs child.
Resources
Choosing & Using Curriculum: For Your Special Child
Homeschooling a child with special needs can be challenging. This book lays out a discussion of different reading and math programs, how to adapt materials for special situations, resources for blind, deaf and speech/language, and curriculum types and styles. It will help you find the resource you need to make your homeschooling successful.
In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging Your Child's Multiple Intelligences
Children learn in differing ways. Thomas Armstrong specializes in helping parents identify the unique areas in each of our children that enhance their special way of learning and expressing creativity. This work on multiple intelligences talks about the eight different kinds of multiple intelligences, showing you how to discover your child's particular areas of strength.
Homeschooling a Special Needs Child
Advantages of Homeschooling a Special Needs Child
When you have a special needs child, no public school will ever be able to fully cater to their needs. Private schools do exist for many types of special needs, but they can be expensive and often still not fully adapted to your child’s specific situation. Therefore, you might find yourself wondering how to get your child the education that they deserve in a format that works for them. Homeschooling a special needs child is a very advantageous choice for many parents who can afford the time and resources to do so. A homeschool program will allow children with special needs to have their specific needs addressed and also avoid many obstacles that they would face in a traditional classroom. When it comes to children with learning disabilities or other severe impairments, sometimes a parent who understands their special needs is the only one who can teach the child.
I Am What I Am
A mother of an exceptional child discusses why homeschooling is the right choice for their family. A personal look at the joys of learning and growing together through an unschooling philosophy of life.
Allowing Your Highly Sensitive/Out of Sync Child to Shine with Unschooling
A look at using an unschooling approach with children who are highly sensitive and out of sync.
Statewide Assessment: Policy Issues & Questions
This policy paper provides a list of questions that parents and parent organizations can address in an effort to ensure that statewide assessment systems fully and fairly include students with disabilities. In the past, students with disabilities have too often been excluded from large-scale assessments. However, students with disabilities now must be included in state assessment programs with appropriate accommodations, as required by the recent amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Special Needs at Home in Washington
A unique community of homeschoolers is growing in Washington state. More and more families are taking the plunge and pulling their special needs children out of school or keeping them home in the first place. Why the increasing numbers? The reasons are as many and varied as the kids themselves. The idea of taking challenged students out of school and helping them learn at home is not a new one. but seems more do-able, less daunting today, thanks to new support groups, resources and information.
Resources for Families with a Special Needs Child
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Here you'll find the text of the law, along with amendments, articles, general information, and more.
Kulp Homeschool
List of resources for those homeschooling children with special needs.
LD OnLine
LD OnLine.org is the leading information service in the field of learning disabilities, serving more than 200,000 parents, teachers, and other professionals each month. Launched in 1996, it was the first and is by far the most visited learning disabilities site on the web. LD OnLine features thousands of helpful articles on learning disabilities and ADHD, monthly columns by noted experts in the field, a free and confidential question and answer service, active bulletin boards, and a Yellow Pages referral directory of professionals, schools, and products. LD OnLine is often the first destination for parents and educators seeking information on how to help children and adults with learning disabilities.
Curriculum Associates
Offers BRIGANCE Screening and Inventories products. Designed for use in elementary and middle schools, the CIBS-R is a valuable resource for programs serving students with special needs, and continues to be indispensable in IEP development and program planning.
Homeschooling Kids With Disabilities
Homeschooling Kids With Disabilities offers information and support to people who are homeschooling children with special educational needs.
Homeschool Curriculum Choices for High School
Choosing a high school curriculum for a homeschooler can feel daunting. It presents a greater challenge when your child has special needs. This guide will help you choose a homeschool high school curriculum for a student with dyslexia.
Homeschooling and Libraries: New Solutions and Opportunities
Homeschools are alwsy looking for alternative ways of schooling that do not necessarily reflect what a typical classroom looks like. Since homeschooling is so diverse across families, information institutions, including public, academic, school, and special libraries may find it challenging to meet all their needs and desires. This collection of essays offers approaches and strategies from library professionals and veteran homeschoolers on how to best serve the needs and experiences of homeschooled youth. This book includes information on special needs homeschooling, gifted students, and African American students as well.
Support for Special Needs Homeschoolers in Washington
Special Needs Homeschooling Forum at vegsource.com
A message board for parents who are homeschooling special needs children.
National Challenged Homeschoolers Associated Network (NATHHAN)
NATHHAN (NATional cHallenged Homeschoolers Associated Network) is a Christian, non-profit organization dedicated to providing encouragement to families with children with special needs that are homeschooling. They publish an online or hard copy quarterly newsletter. They also publish a family directory, updated each year. They have a large lending library by operated by mail.
Special Homeschoolers of WA (SpecialHSofWA)
Email support group for all families living in Washington state who are homeschooling special needs children or are considering it.
Shining Children with Radical Unschooling
This list is a forum for those either radically unschooling or learning how to radically unschool to discuss our "shining" children (Highly Sensitive, Out of Sync, Asperger’s traits, Explosive) and all the issues that accompany life with them--how we grow and learn ourselves thanks to our non-typical children and how unschooling frees their spirits and allows them to truly "shine."
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Featured Resources
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Miserly Moms: Living on One Income in a Two-Income Economy
Save Thousands of Dollars a Year Jonni McCoy and her family are proof that you live on one income. The McCoys made a successful transition from two incomes to one while living in one of the most expensive parts of America: the San Francisco Bay Area. Her Miserly Guidelines will help you save thousands of dollars a year on everything from groceries to electricity to insurance and household cleaners—as well as reveal the hidden costs of holding a job and common money wasters. Her practical,...
America's National Parks: The Spectacular Forces That Shaped Our Treasured Lands
From stunning mountain ranges to arid expanses of desert, America has been blessed with an incredibly diverse land -- and the vision to protect it for our and future generations to enjoy. These lands are ours to view, wander, learn from, and revel in. America's National Parks captures all that is great about all fifty-six parks in the national park system. It also gives interesting, easy-to-understand background on the geological and ecological forces that continue to make each national park so ...
Writing Strands & Reading Strands
This program is based on research which shows that there is no useable relationship between the study of grammar as an abstracted skill and the ability to communicate. Writing Strands provides quality reading, writing and speech materials for homeschoolers with children ages 3 through 18. The guided exercises in Writing Strands progress incrementally and allow students to work independently, yet provide the guidance students need to sharpen their ability to inform, persuade and entertain in writ...
These Rare Lands
If a picture's worth 1,000 words, this book--with its hundreds of breathtaking photos of America's National Parks--is a well-stocked bookstore. Accompanied by the words of poet laureate Mark Strand, These Rare Lands is a perfect coffee-table book for anyone who has enjoyed the wonders of nature's wildest places. From a storm over Sequoia National Park in California to the otherworldly stalactites and stalagmites of New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns and an Atlantic sunset in Maine's Acadia, th...
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of Dumbing Us Down and to keep this classic current, we are renewing the cover art, adding new material about John and ...