Category Archives: Homeschool

Sharing 20 years of homeschool experience

Book List for Homeschooling a Child with Down syndrome

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As I mentioned in my recent post on homeschooling a child with Down syndrome, there were many books that helped me as I homeschooled my son with Down syndrome. Not all of them were “school” books.

There’s a certain amount of acceptance that parents of kids with disabilities must gain, and it takes a while to get there. Sitting down to work with your child makes you realize just how hard it is for him to learn things, and that can really get you down.

Some books have helped me understand that homeschooling him is a process that will go on in one form or another for his entire life. It’s not like it was with my older kids, where we worked together for a certain number of years and then sent them out into the world. This guy has a lot of hurdles in front of him, and while I try not to be negative, it was plain to me pretty early on that he would not attain anywhere near the level of education his siblings would. That was a pretty depressing realization for me, and I had to find encouragement from a multitude of sources, including books, in order to keep homeschooling him.

(Sometimes, when I got discouraged, I thought about what it would have been like for him in school, and that usually got me back on track. After all, who had time to sit patiently with him each day and work and play if not me? No teacher or aide would have had time to work with him one-on-one, which is what a distractible guy like him needed, and no teacher or aide could know him as well as I do, anyway.)

Keep in mind that while these books helped my son and me, that doesn’t mean they’ll work for all parents homeschooling kids with Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities. Children differ in temperament and ability, and so do parents. There’s a wide range of abilities among children with Down syndrome, and they develop at different rates, although most do develop more slowly than your “typical” child.

In my son’s case, there are other issues. Due to central apnea during his infancy, he may have sustained minor brain damage. His doctor said we could run a lot of expensive tests to find out for certain if and where such damage occurred, but he felt that we’d be spending a whole lot of money without being able to change things. We agreed. But what our son went through makes it harder for him to learn certain things. Even his long-time speech therapist said some of his speech patterns are not typical of Down syndrome.

So he is a unique individual, and so am I, thus don’t rely on this booklist to cure what ails you and your child. On the other hand, I’ve always felt that if I learned one useful thing from a book, it was worth reading. So hopefully, you will find at least some tidbits in these books that will make them worth your time.

(Do keep in mind that the curricular-type books here are not the only things I used to homeschool my son. We also did a lot of hands-on work. But the purpose of this post is to share books we’ve found helpful.)

Christian Homes and Special Kids by Sherry Bushnell and Diane Ryckman
This book is a great resource and encouragement for all parents homeschooling their child with special needs, and I’m not just saying that because there’s a chapter about our family in the book. It’s just a book written by parents who want to share their experiences and their favorite resources. ISBN-10 09744332-0-9
Available at http://www.nathhan.com

Helps for Special Education Teachers by Eileen Shaum
I bought this book from Rod and Staff, one of my favorite sources for homeschooling books. It helped me establish a well-rounded foundation for my work with Josh. It helps you set goals and gives you activities for reaching those goals.
Available at http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com/item/19031

Rod and Staff’s Preschool Series of Workbooks
We bought and worked through the entire series twice, that’s how much we liked these workbooks. Lots of cut-and-paste educational activities. Pages are nicely illustrated (farm animals, not licensed characters!) without being too busy and cluttered as many workbooks are. I used this series with dd17 when she was little and wanted to do school with the big kids, so that’s how I knew about them when dsds15 reached that developmental level. I can’t say enough about these workbooks!
Available at http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com/item/10020
NOTE: You can usually find Rod and Staff products at homeschool conference vendor halls. I highly recommend their products for all children.

Teaching Reading to Children With Down Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (Topics in Down Syndrome) by Patricia Logan Oelwein
Excellent resource! This book offers complete instructions for building a reading program for your child. By the way, I have been to two of Ms. Oelwein’s seminars and learned so much. If you get the chance to attend one, go! You won’t be sorry.

Teaching Math to People With Down Syndrome and Other Hands-On Learners: Basic Survival Skills (Topics in Down Syndrome) Book 1 by DeAnna Horstmeier, Ph.D.
Personally I didn’t find this book as useful as Patricia Oelwein’s book, but your mileage may vary. I do like the fact that this book is intended for people of all ages with Down syndrome, not just children. I attended Dr. Horstmeier’s seminar and enjoyed her stories about her adult son with Down syndrome.

Communication Skills in Children With Down Syndrome: A Guide for Parents (Topics in Down Syndrome) by Libby Kumin, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Filled with ideas for encouraging proper speech development in your child.

When Slow Is Fast Enough: Educating the Delayed Preschool Child by Dr. Joan Goodman
An eye-opening book that helped me understand exactly what early intervention is all about.

Teacher Created Resources

My son is a workbook guy: he gets great joy from finishing a page and getting a star on it. We have had success with some of TCR’s math workbooks. I love how they have several workbook pages for each step in the learning process. I photocopied the pages over and over and over until he got the concepts (it can take a long time).

You can buy TCR books online, but I recommend going to a teacher store and flipping through them yourself to see which might work for you and your child. If that’s not convenient, you can download many of their titles as eBooks at: http://www.teachercreated.com

Here are two of their books that we really used a lot:

Take It To Your Seat Learning Centers published by Evan-Moor
These pre-made manipulative activity books called “Take It To Your Seat” are really good–clever learning projects all ready to be cut out, laminated and used regularly. Two we enjoyed: Take It to Your Seat Math Centers, Grades K-1 and Take It to Your Seat Phonics Centers, Grades K-1.

Buki Books
We love Buki Books! They’re educational but so much fun that kids don’t mind. There are dot-to-dot books up to 1-150 (painless way to learn number sequencing), Calc-U-Color books (color by number where you have to figure out the number first using addition or subtraction), maze books and more. They have several age levels for each type of book. Once again, I found these in teacher stores, but you can also find them online, like this particular favorite of my son’s: Mosaic Hidden Pictures. In teacher stores, they’re often found on freestanding kiosks. They’re very colorful and hard to miss!

Betty Lukens Felt Activity books (BettyLukens.com) Great for teaching Bible stories to kinesthetic learners. At 15 my son still liked looking at these books and arranging the felt pieces on them. I think the fact that they’re realistic-looking and not babyish helps.

50 Bible Paper Pop-Ups: 3-D Visuals for Hands-On Learning Fun by Robin S. Parimore and Lynne Marie Davis
We worked our way through this book for a year. Requires cutting skills. I combined each project with the appropriate Bible story.

The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling by Barbara Frank
My book has a chapter in it on homeschooling your child with special needs.

The Dance Goes On by Roberta Bandy
The true story of how the birth of a child with special needs grew the faith of a young couple. We knew the Bandy family for years; their story is so encouraging!

A Simple Homeschool Thanksgiving

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If you’re one of those lucky people who are having Thanksgiving at their house this year, I’ve got some advice for you. Don’t do school that week!

I realize this isn’t an issue for you unschoolers out there. But there are others who are emotionally attached to our lesson plans, whether we’ve written them out to the tiniest detail, or just have a few goals we like to keep in mind. Ever the optimists, we think we can get plenty of school done on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving Wednesday night to get our dinner cooked in advance. That’s called dreaming.

Here’s a Thanksgiving plan for the homeschool mom that I developed after many years of running myself ragged trying to do school Thanksgiving week while planning, shopping for and cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the result of years of fine-tuning, careful consideration and a few mommy meltdowns. These days, my goal is to keep things as simple as possible.

Monday:

First thing in the morning, have the kids clean up the area(s) where you do school

Next, provide them with sheets of construction paper, markers, scissors and glue sticks, and ask them to make place cards, a centerpiece for the table and decorations for the house, featuring turkeys, Indians, pilgrims and anything else they deem Thanksgiving-ish.

This will keep them busy for a while, leaving you free to study your cookbooks and the grocery sale flyers so you can plot your menu and your plan of attack (Tip: go to the store with the most sale items you need first; if they’re out of something (if?), you can pick it up at one of the other stores).

Monday night:

Leave your husband or a sitter with the kids so you can do your grocery-shopping in peace. Going by yourself means you’ll get done faster. It’s also your best chance of coming home with everything on your list.

Tuesday:

Time to clean the house for company; be sure to get your kids involved by setting a timer for 15 minutes, then telling them anything you find of theirs that’s not in its place when the bell rings becomes yours. That should help get rid of most of the general clutter.

Take your own clutter (in my case that’s magazines, newspapers and books), throw it into a laundry basket, and hide it in the basement or laundry room. Do the same with your husband’s clutter.

Set the kids loose with dust cloths and the vacuum cleaner. Remember, the house doesn’t have to be spotless, just reasonably clean and uncluttered.

Give a little person a feather or lambs’ wool duster and let them clean as they wish.

Give someone else a spray bottle of window cleaner and a roll of paper towels, and ask them to shine the kitchen appliances and any windows they can reach.

When all the cleaning is done, sit down together and read some Thanksgiving stories. (We like Stories of the Pilgrims by Margaret Pumphrey).

Tuesday night:

Assemble all the recipes you’ll need and read each (especially the turkey directions) to refresh your memory. Run out to the store for any ingredients you might have forgotten. You do not want to go to the store tomorrow.

Wednesday:

Get that turkey and stuffing going bright and early; once it’s done, remove all the meat and place it in a big aluminum roaster for reheating tomorrow. Store the turkey and stuffing separately in the refrigerator. Pitch the turkey carcass, or freeze it for making soup stock some other time.

The kids should help with the meal preparations. Kids can:

  • peel potatoes
  • cut up vegetables
  • polish silverware
  • cut loaves of bread into cubes for stuffing
  • wash dishes and utensils

In addition to the above, teenagers can:

  • assemble casseroles
  • bake pies
  • add table leaves and bring in additional chairs and tables, if necessary

Wednesday night:

Give the kids poster paper and markers, and ask them to draw the things for which they are thankful. Display posters prominently around the house. While they’re busy with that, you can finish preparing make-ahead recipes such as gelatin salads and baked desserts.

Thursday morning:

Reheat the turkey and stuffing.

Work on the rest of the meal.

Assign your husband and kids to set the table(s). The kids can set out their beautiful centerpiece and place cards.

Enjoy the day with relatives and friends.

Thursday night:

After the relatives have gone, the kids are in bed, and you and your husband have collapsed on the sofa, consider what you have to be thankful for:

You get to see your kids every day.

You get to witness their growth, the thrill of learning to read, the accomplishment of mastering new skills.

Your life isn’t run by a school schedule or a bus schedule. You’re your own boss, and you plan your day the way you want to. How many other adults have that freedom?

Thank God for making you a mom, for blessing you with the specific kids he sent.

Most especially, thank Him for blessing you with the opportunity to homeschool those kids, for giving you all this time with them now. Someday they’ll be grown and gone, and you’ll have ten times as many memories as other moms, because you were there with them every day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Homeschooling Your Child with Down Syndrome

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Momto4 left this comment on my old blog:

I had my daughter in public school, she is 6 in kindergarten and has down syndrome. They haven’t a CLUE what they are doing. I was very disappointed in their lack of teaching. I will be homeschooling her and it will be interesting as I have never done such a feat. Is there anywhere one could go to help start off in kindergarten for my little girl? Is the curriculum the same? So many many questions. I do know this, anything is better than what we have now.

Since there might be other parents with this same problem, I thought I’d post my response here, where they can find it easily.

Momto4, I admire you for taking matters into your hands once you became unhappy with your daughter’s schooling experience. Pro-active parents are the best asset a child with a disability can have.

Every child with Down syndrome has unique abilities and unique needs, and that’s why I did not use a specific curriculum with my son with Ds, who is now 15. Having homeschooled three older children, I could see that my son was not at or near grade level in scholastic subjects at age 6. I decided instead to test him (using a test I rented for a very reasonable cost from HSLDA). There weren’t any surprises in the test results because I’d been working with him since he was 3 or 4, but you might find such testing very useful for you and your daughter. It will give you an idea of where to concentrate your efforts.

Anyway, after testing him, I continued working with him as I had since he was small, using my own IEP to chart the path we’d need to follow at his speed. We read many, many books, he practiced his printing every day, and we played lots of board games that stressed the different skills he needed.

For example, he had real problems grasping numbers conceptually. He could recite numbers but did not understand what they meant. We played the game “Trouble” once or twice a day and that helped him understand what “six” meant, because that’s the best number to get in that game. BTW, I frequently found the best educational games (sold in teacher stores) discounted at TJMaxx and Marshalls. For my son, educational games where he learns by using his hands instead of just sitting and listening are a real blessing.

My son is speech-delayed, like many children (especially boys) with Ds. I sat in on his sessions with the speech therapist and imitated what she did with him at home on a regular basis. We could not afford thrice-weekly sessions, which had been recommended, but at least this way he was getting daily speech practice. One of the most effective methods of working on speech sounds with him was something the therapist taught me: he’d say a word or sound and I’d reward him with a puzzle piece. So he had to make 100 sounds to get all the pieces of a 100-piece puzzle, and then we’d work on the puzzle together. (We still do this at least once a week, because he really enjoys it.)

In addition to working on his letters, number concepts and speech, we did lots of artwork, including working with crayons, paint, stampers and clay. He loved this, and it was a nice break from the “school” work. We also got him out in nature by going on bike rides (we used a third wheel attachment on my husband’s bike because our son loved to run off and we didn’t want to teach him to ride a bike on his own, thus helping him get away from us more quickly!) Visits to parks, zoos and the aquarium also widened his horizons.

One more thing we did as part of his “school” was to teach him how to work around the house. He’d seen the older kids doing their chores and wanted to be like them, so this wasn’t hard. In fact, he’s been a very eager helper. He also likes to work with his dad in his workshop. (I can still picture him at around age five or so driving nails into a piece of wood with great intensity.)

You’ve asked for specific materials that will tell you what to do with your daughter. There have been several books that helped me learn how to work with my son, and I will list them in a subsequent post. In the meantime, I’ve asked another blogger who homeschools a daughter with Ds to answer your question. You’ll find her post here.

The bottom line, Momto4, is that you are really doing something wonderful for your daughter. Homeschooling her will mean she will get much more one-on-one instruction, or “face time” as I like to call it. Not only is that much better for her, but it will help you learn more about how she learns. She’ll also be able to avoid the negative effects of school socialization, such as picking up bad habits and being bullied because of her disability. And, of course, the bottom line is that you know her better than any teacher can know her, so she’s getting a teacher who knows her well and wants the very best for her. I think your daughter is very fortunate to have you for a mom.

(If you enjoyed this article, you may also like Book List for Homeschooling a Child with Down syndrome.)

Preparing for Adulthood Without College

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I loved college. I loved the campus, I loved the dorms, and I loved the challenging classes (well, most of them). College was a great experience for me, and once I began having children, it was something I wanted for them, too. I assumed they would feel the same way. But as my oldest reached her mid-teens, she decided that college was not for her.

At first I thought she would change her mind, and so I geared her work toward college preparatory subjects, and required her to take the PSAT and ACT. She scored above average on both tests. Soon college brochures and catalogs filled our mailbox, but none of them changed her mind.

Her dream was to work and be on her own. She felt that going to college was a way of delaying adulthood, and she was eager to be an adult. She had dreams of travel, and eventually getting her own place to live. She had been very independent, even as a small child, and that trait grew stronger as she approached her late teens.

I kept thinking that maybe we should just sign her up somewhere. I thought if she went away to school and lived with other girls her age, she would change her mind and enjoy her surroundings. But my husband felt that there was no point in sending an unmotivated student.

As I grew to accept the inevitability of the situation, teaching only college preparatory subjects felt all wrong. Why study subjects she had no interest in, like a foreign language or chemistry, if she wasn’t going to need them for college? All she could talk about was how she was going to move to this city or that city. Some of her plans were very impractical because she had no idea of what it would cost to live on her own. Her naive talk started to make me a little nervous.

I closely studied my large collection of homeschool catalogs, hoping to find resources we could use for her last year of homeschooling. But it seemed like most products were geared toward the college-bound student, and those that remained focused on cooking and sewing. She already knew how to cook and sew. I was more concerned about how she would handle credit cards and whether she really understood how much it would cost her to feed and house herself. If she didn’t want a degree, she would likely have to live on a modest income. (How times have changed!)

I decided to design sensible projects for her. So, in addition to Math Review, Shakespeare, Bible, History and Expository Writing, each week she had to research different aspects of living on her own. She compared rents in different cities, and interviewed insurance agents, landlords and utility companies. She asked many questions and got many answers.

Soon we branched out to subjects she would need to know about before she got her first full-time job. She learned about health insurance (a must, as our health insurance would not cover her once she turned 19 unless she attended college full-time). She learned about taxes and withholding, budgeting and even mortgages. She educated herself about every aspect of buying a car, and the pros and cons of car loans.

I noticed that as she completed the projects*, her naive plans slowly turned into more logical ones. By the time she finished homeschooling, I felt that she was well-prepared for independence. She started studying different cities on her own. She researched and bought her first car, for which she paid cash, because she understood just how much interest a car loan would have cost her. And she didn’t move out as soon as she turned 18, as she’d always said she would, because now she really understood that she couldn’t afford it.

Instead, she saved up a portion of her pay, and she now has a good-sized savings account. She is nearly 20, and will soon move into a city apartment with two other young women. We will miss her, but we see how excited she is about living on her own, and we are thankful that she is prepared for it.

Walking through the preparation process with her taught me a lot, too. I learned to listen to what she was really saying instead of expecting her to want what I wanted for her. I saw how prepared she could become with the right training. And now I get to see her try her wings as she leaves the nest.

Author note: Since I wrote this article almost ten years ago, my daughter has lived in three large Midwestern cities. She now owns two Internet businesses and, unlike many of her peers, is enjoying the debt-free life.

* The projects are in my book Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers.