Help for Homeschooling Special Needs Students
Every child is unique, and learning doesn’t look the same for everyone. This page brings together resources for homeschooling children with different learning needs, so you can create a learning environment that works for your family.
Many Gates to Learning: Understanding Learning Styles
Some children understand best through what they see, others through what they hear, and some need to move, touch, or create. These become learning “gates,” and if one is blocked, another might be stronger.
These “gates” are often called learning styles—the different ways children take in, process, and remember information. SchoolhouseTeachers.com offers a variety of tools to support these different approaches.
Visual Learners
Children who learn best by seeing may benefit from:
- Video lessons
- Charts, diagrams, or illustrations
- Written notes or steps in a process
Auditory Learners
Children who learn best by hearing may benefit from:
- Read-alouds or text-to-speech tools
- Discussions of what they’ve learned
- Audiobooks
Kinesthetic Learners
Children who learn best through activity may benefit from:
- Hands-on science experiments or models
- Dramatic reenactments of stories or history events
- Movement (like reciting spelling words while jumping on a pogo stick)
Musical Learners
Children who connect strongly with rhythm and sound may benefit from:
- Bible verses sung to well-known tunes
- Percussion to punctuate history stories
- Math facts chanted in rhymes
Memory Hooks and Mnemonics
Memory “hooks” and mnemonics help students remember information by connecting it to something familiar, simple, or fun.
Small tricks like these support memory across many subjects:
- Acronyms (PEMDAS for the order of operations)
- Silly sentences (King Philip’s Classic Order for classification)
- Visual connections (draw a picture)
- Word associations (add motions or gestures)
- Stories (make up stories to illustrate math facts)
Every child’s needs are different, and some families may require additional support beyond what a curriculum can provide. If your child has more significant learning challenges, you may already be working with a specialist or therapist. The resources here can be used alongside that support, allowing you to adapt learning at home in ways that fit your child’s abilities and strengths.
The following courses and resources are here to help you put these ideas into practice. Use what works, adjust as needed, and build a learning approach that fits your child.
Not a member? Explore the resources available on SchoolhouseTeachers.com.
Courses
Color Block Handwriting: Teach correct letter formation with fifty-two letter units: one for each letter in both lower and upper case. Designed by a mom of kids with writing struggles, this handwriting curriculum can benefit students who are learning to write, as well as students in need of extra support for letter reversals. Feel free to pick and choose letters as needed.
Reading Remedies: Dr. Matthew Glavach shares resources and tips to help you encourage your young or struggling reader. Listening to an expressive, meaning-filled voice can draw students into the magic of reading. Many of his programs are content-area based to help students build rich vocabulary and learn to read clusters of words that share common elements. Dr. Glavach provides lessons for different learning styles, not simply one option for all students to use. This helps each student improve using their own personal learning style, which encourages the student to continue as they see the progress they are making.
Visit the Reading Remedies page for a complete list and description of the units included in Dr. Glavach’s course.
Literacy Center: This members-only resource breaks apart each skill needed to become an expert reader into bite-sized chunks. It has sections for Pre-Readers, Early Readers, Emerging Readers, Growing Readers, Fluent Readers, and Reading Comprehension.
Video-Based Lessons: If your child learns best with video-based lessons, please take a look at our Streaming Video Library. The bottom of the page contains Quick Links and carousel displays of our courses with video content. That information is available in table or list form on our Course Components page. You’ll also find information regarding video lessons on the introductory page for each course.
Audio Based Lessons: Almost all of the curricula on SchoolhouseTeachers.com can use technology to read the content to your child. You may research your favorite text-to-speech reader, or you may use the built-in readers offline in either the Adobe Acrobat® PDF reader or in Powerpoint® Presentations. Click here for instructions.
Interactive Lessons: Selected curricula on SchoolhouseTeachers.com have been converted to interactive courses on our iST platform. If your student is struggling with wiggles or inattention, change up the school schedule with something engaging and new. Click here for a list of courses, and click here for a video introduction to iST.
Focused Learning Centers: If your student benefits from a different approach, you may find additional support in other centers. The Hands-On Learning Center offers suggestions for more interactive curricula, while the Games Center provides engaging ways to reinforce skills through play.
Adaptive Technology from World Book
Audio Learning: All of the encyclopedia articles in World Book Online can be read to the student by the website. Click the speaker icon (in the Kids library) or the ear icon (in the Discover, Student, or Advanced libraries) to hear the article. Students can also change the voice that reads the article.
Open Dyslexic Font: All of the articles in the World Book Student library can be read and printed in the Open Dyslexic Font. Select the Student option from the main menu page, find the article you wish to view, and click the gear icon to change the settings. The settings will allow students to change the text size and the font (select Open Dyslexic for this option), as well as to have the article translated into other languages if needed.
Parent Resources
Special Needs: Educational Consultant, Judi Munday, has put together a 19-part program to help those with children who have special needs, be it language delays or deficits, dyslexia, or difficulty with math. She provides practical solutions and helpful tips for choosing curriculum and modifying and adapting instruction.
Your Child’s Learning Style: A series of articles designed to help you identify and understand your child’s preferred learning style so that you can teach to his or her strengths and find creative approaches you can use to tackle weaknesses. Come discover new ways of helping your children excel!
Kinetic Connections: If you have a child who learns best with a very hands-on approach, check out these Kinetic Connections articles by Edwina Moody that explore math, science, reading, history, and more.
Special Families with Special Needs: A series of articles designed to help and encourage parents of children with special needs. This series speaks to topics including self-care, marriage, how to start a special needs group, what every special needs family wishes you knew, and more.
Special Needs Trenches: This is a series of articles by the mother of a boy dealing with the volatile combination of autism, Tourette’s syndrome, and puberty. Its purpose is to encourage you, share with you, and remind you of God’s faithful love no matter how dark the day is you are going through.
You Can Homeschool Your Special Needs Child: An article series, written by the mom of a special needs child, that is designed to encourage parents that they, too, can homeschool their special needs child and that they, in turn, can encourage and fuel their physical, mental, social, and spiritual development.
eBooks from The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine
Please feel free to download these useful eBooks from The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, free to members of SchoolhouseTeachers.com, to help homeschool your special learner.
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