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Homeschooling sets you apart, homeschooling with special needs children is a whole new ball game in itself. We are not the first and will not be the last, but because of the limited resources available to the small population that does homeschool with special needs children, I thought I would share what has worked for us in our short time homeschooling.
Once we decided to go from public school to homeschooling, we are potty trained, pretend play regularly and are completing assignments that I was told in parent teacher conference, my child would not be able to complete prior to Kindergarten. We are so blessed to be able to embark on this journey and I am excited you have decided to join us!
Here is a quick overview of our daily schedule:
0730: Wake up and get dressed
0800: Breakfast and daily schedules (Children on the spectrum thrive with consistency so we create a schedule everyday). This used to be done via our dry erase board, but Vincent seems to prefer the pocket chart with word strips now.
Therapy Goals: If my children were to go to public school they would receive several hours of occupational therapy and speech a piece during the school week. Although, both Maxwell and Vincent receive one hour of occupational therapy and one hour of speech therapy each in our home, I wanted to make sure that they would have the same opportunities at home as they would have had if I left them in the public school system. With this thought in mind, we set aside monthly OT and Speech goals and work on them daily, as part of our homeschool routine.
We keep track of these goals in a journal that I created and is now available for purchase on Amazon! This journal allows you to keep all your therapy goals together in one place. This is also available for purchase, via our website at www.supportingautismmama.com
OT Activities : Our occupational therapy goals consists of areas like scissor work, tracing, getting dressed, hair brushing, etc. We also include our heavy work and sensory play during this time.
Check out our sensory room post to see how we use these tools to succeed!
For us, occupational therapy skills are our skills of activities of daily living. This is not only a time to work on scissor work and pencil grasp, but how to get dressed, potty training and teeth brushing. These are skills that our children could use extra attention on, and because they are no longer in a traditional school, we have the extra time to create strengths where there was weakness.
This is Maxwell during sensory play. During this time, we work with sensory bags, sensory bins (like pictured) and sensory bottles. I find that allowing them to perform these activities before extensive table top time, allows for more success at the table.
This extra occupational therapy time, also allows for us to incorporate additional heavy work so that we can have the most effective school time that we can.
Speech Activities: As well as adding additional occupational therapy goals, we also have speech goals that we attempt to incorporate daily. These goals for Max are often simple, like waving goodbye and giving high fives to increase his social interaction with us. These are all steps that need to occur prior to saying words. For Vincent, we often have a file folder or speech book that work on regularly to try to increase his conversation skills.
Social Skills: Next, daily we like to include a social skill. These include pretend play, waving goodbye and playing the social game that we have listed below.
We also include pretend play during the social skills time. Most of our pretend play is adult lead at this time. So, I typically, make statements like, “I would really like some pizza today. Would that be $2?” Vincent typically is able to follow along with this type of play. Find what works for your kiddo, getting down and playing WITH THEM is the best way to find this out.
Some of these goals are included in our pretend play post about our Valentine Shop.
Academic Goals : These are goals that they would work on in a typical school setting.
Language Arts : Vincent is able to work from a homeschooling curriculum workbook for this section of his homeschooling so we just read and work through this book at this time. However, Maxwell needs a more specific curriculum. Maxwell is currently three years old so we just work on daily goals with him. For example; this week we are working on the letter E. Today we made an E craft, sang the E song and practiced writing the letter. The whole “language arts” time took us approximately ten minutes for Maxwell, but quiet frankly is probably all he could sit for. The lessons do not have to be significant.
Math: For Math we do tasks similar to what we do in language arts. For Vincent, we have a textbook and for Maxwell, we have a shape, color and number for the week. We incorporate these into three different activities. Check out this blog post to see how we run a typical week of Math with Maxwell.
Science/Art: Honestly, we typically just do these projects on Fridays. Its a morning full of projects followed by field trips in the afternoon.
Here, Vincent is painting in the snow. This is a great low prep activity on a snow day. We gathered snow, water, food coloring and paint brushes.
Additional Goals:
Come Follow me: Another, positive of us deciding to school from home is that we can add in additional curriculum like church activities. We follow the Come Follow Me curriculum from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Music Time: Although, we have music time everyday during our Language Arts with Maxwell, like you see below. We also like to add a song before lunch time, following along side the church curriculum or the season/holiday that is occurring.
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Supporting Autism Mamas 