Oct 10
25
Learning Together-Strategies That Work With Special Needs Kids Part 1
When children are homeschooled it is easy to combine subjects like History, Science, and Geography and teach lots of ages at once. This can be intimidating for families who have never attempted it before. It can be freeing for the family bogged down with 4 children all doing varying levels of 7 subjects using textbooks and workbooks. It can be especially useful when teaching special needs kids who may be sensitive about grade level labels on textbooks and workbooks.
When a mom is trying to teach lots of kids at once, workbooks and textbooks can be used as supplements to lessons that are taught to all school aged children simultaneously. Then, mom can pick and choose chapters to read, pages to work on, and projects to assign that complement the main lesson and use activities that all the children can work on together.
The best way to accomplish this is described best by Jessica Hulcy, the author of KONOS and homeschool mentor to thousands of parents for the last 25 years. Jessica has a resource I highly recommend, even if you don’t use KONOS called Creating the Balance. In this DVD, you get to watch examples of Jessica teaching her own children and teaching seminars. She explains that teaching a multi-level group is like being a bus driver. You let your youngest children get off the “bus” first when you are teaching in this way, gearing your activities to have several levels of learning. By then end of the lesson, your youngest may be coloring nearby or playing outside while your oldest is writing an outline for a report.
The point is, you’ve taught everyone the same lesson, drastically reducing the amount of time you have spent in preparation, but every child in your house has learned what they are capable of learning. This is especially helpful when teaching special needs kids, as you may have a younger child who is capable of doing more than an older child. Workbooks have grade levels on the front labels, making an older child feel inferior if his younger sibling has surpassed him. In multi-level teaching, you are in the driver’s seat, making sure each “passenger” is involved in a project he can handle and minimizing those feelings of inferiority that can flare up among siblings.
If you are interested in more intense homeschool mentoring geared toward families of special needs kids, visit homeschoolbehaviorproblems.com today for more information about getting the help you need with your special kid.
