want to begin homeschooling

Glad to hear you’re going to hs! I have hs my 9yod since the beginning and we really enjoy it. We just found out that she is dyslexic so we I have been searching for curr. also here are some websites that I think will get you started. www.hwtears.com www.lifetimeonline.com www.singnlearn.com www.joyceherzog.com (she writes books and curr. for hs and ld kids)
www.gwbc.com wwwchfweb.com (this is a hs message board) The others are curr.. I have found my d does well with using the tapes to sing with to learn her mult. tables and the states and capitals etc. those can be found on singnlearn website. God Bless. Hope all goes well and enjoy.
One more is www.epsbooks.com (it has some good books for comprehension)

You may not need a special curriculum at all. My recommendation would be to address his weaknesses, especially in specific skills like reading or math, aggressively and separately — so if he’s behind in reading, do intensive work on that every day (not hours of intensive; for lots of kids 25-50 minutes will do fine — but far more important than what kind of program you use is doing it every day and it being a program that has the kid really involved, not looking at a worksheet or pretending to read independently). If you want more info on reading, e-mail me (there’s also some info on my website at www.resourceroom.net, and a *lot* of lesson plans and what have you for middle school age kids).

Some ADD kids can hyperfocus if conditions are right (schools often don’t see it - they make the kid get up and move when that bell rings) and once they get going on something they can do incredible things if you let ‘em keep at it. Others really do need little chunks of work and then running around the house a few times (or better yet, a physical project that is useful that they like). Figuring out your kid’s best time of day for sit-down work can be immensely helpful. A really popular technique is to tell the kid he’s got to work very hard on, say math, for 15 minutes — and then you’ll put it away. Often you’ll get more work in that 15 minutes than in 90 minutes of “you’ve got to finish this page, for as long as it takes.” Could be the kiddo starts out only able to focus for 5 minutes… so you might need a few sessions a day… but this is another chance to monitor progress as you up it to 6, 7… and another advantage of homeschooling is you can take the time to make sure that what he’s doing independently is appropriate — not too easy and not too hard (though at the beginning, for most kids too easy is a good idea to build confidence).

HOw much structure to provide is another big question. Most ADD kids need it. ORganization problems can come in all flavors, and often they include trouble organizing what a kid learns. So while another kid might be able to explore whatever he wanted to explore, when he wanted to explore it, and would intuitively build a lovely framework of knowledge and experience, lots of ADD kids would have a whole lot of fragmented experiences. Don’t assume that somehow, a kid will “figure out how to organize if he has to.” There are people that throw kids into the deep end of the pool with that philosophy and sometimes it works, but not as well as teaching a kid to swim, especially if he’s *not* a natural athlete. People who are naturally organized often have a lot of trouble truly comprehending the troubles disorganized folks have. (And sometimes people who are naturally disorganized but managed to survive don’t realize just how much better things could go with a little structure ;))

ONe of your main goals should be to design his schooling so that he can begin to unlearn that he’s a failure as a student — you don’t want him thinking that he’s got to be homeschooled because he just can’t make it at school. It will take lots of evidence and time — what might be obvious to you as good progress and good work isn’t always obvious to kids who have it deeply ingrained that if something is easy for them it must be *really* easy for everybody else, and anything they can do, well anybody else could have done better. SO build in proof positive of learning for both you — charts, projects, or even/especially tests. So often there’s a feeling in a kid that well, his mom likes this stuff, but he’d never make it if he had to take a real test.

http://www.ldonline.org has a wonderful “LD IN Depth” section — go to the “for Teachers” and you’ll find teaching techniques and strategies, and ideas for adapting curricula so they work for kids with uneven skills. Www.teachwithmovies.org has tons of information about using movies to teach just about anything.

It’s a bit overwhelming — it can help to figure out what you want to be doing at the minimum (what skills work is the priority and what content area especially in areas of his interest — can be connected with the kinds of things he likes to do and could do for a living), figure out
what you need to get going for the first chunk of time, *knowing* that you’ll want to make changes as you learn how your kid learns.

You will also have to figure out which battles you may have to fight because of the baggage he’s picked up. One temptation that can be hard to resist — but it’s *really* important to resist— is to placate his ego and pretend his skills are better than they are. It’s actually a whole lot better to be down-and-dirty honest about that stuff… if he’s reading at a first grade level, that absolutely positively does NOT mean he belongs in first grade, period. But it does mean that for that one specific task that he can read the words a first grader can, and he can’t read the words a second grader can. He knows a whole lot more words. He knows a whole lot more STUFF. THe huge advantage to this approach is by knowing where you are starting, you can also see the real progress you make. So if in a year he’s up to a third grade reading level — keep going at that rate and he’ll be on track. If you pretended he was at a fifth grade level… then he’s still just “way behind the rest of the world,” and is likely to stay discouraged.

If you’ve read this far, good luck :) (Good luck anyway…) And keep asking questions!Michele wrote:
>
> Hi ,
> I want to start homeschooling my 11 year old next year.
> He has been diagnosed slightly ADD/LD with fine motor
> coordination problems hense his trouble with writing & math.
> I first noticed his problems in the 1st grade and went
> through a period of denial. We are in the Navy and have
> moved several times in my sons schooling to include So.
> Ca.,Norfolk Va., London UK., and now No. Va. Now, after so
> many years of continual adjustment to a variety of public
> curriculms he has great anxiety. He is very bright and
> sensitive and I think the Middle School years will be very
> hard on him as he is socially immature and physically
> uncoordinated, but a big tall boy.
> This past year I had him Assessed by his elementary
> school and he was found “ineligible” for LD services. The
> committee told me that if I could get a doctor to diagnose
> him ADD then I would get the services automatically. It was
> considered a “gold card”. After meeting with these “experts”
> I have decided that my son will not get the social skills,
> organizational skills, and OT that he needs to have success
> in middle school. The label of ADD/LD is mortifying to him.
> I cannot see him lose any more self esteem and confidence.
> So my question is… where can I find a 6th grade
> curriculm designed for ADD/LD kids?? and is there one that
> can be modified to fit the specific needs of my son? I am
> due for an eligibility review meeting this month and I would
> like to be armed with a plan before I tell them to forget it
> I’ll be homeschooling.
> Thanks for listening,
> Michele

Usually you do not want to start with a packaged curriculum for a grade level. Children tend not to fit a “one size fits all” package. One of the huge advantages of homeschooling is that it allows you to pick and choose curriculum materials to suit your child’s individual needs. Often a child will be working on different grade levels in different subjects. Often the choice of approach is critical also.

Your best bet is to do some curriculum research on the net. A great source of information are the homeschooling boards at http://www.vegsource.com. Parents there discuss which curriculums they have used, their advantages and disadvantages, what kinds of children they do and do not seem to work well for, etc.

Individual subject curriculums that I have used and liked, and consider suitable for both LD and non-LD children, include:
Handwriting without Tears, http://www.hwtears.com
Singapore Math, http://www.singaporemath.com
Easy Grammar, http://www.easygrammar.com
TRAH & WISE Guide to Spelling, http://home.integrityonline.com/backhome/BHI_Catalog.html

There are many, many other homeschooling resources and curriculums available. For a handy resource, go to http://www.rainbowresource.com and request their printed catalog.

A book I can recommend is “Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills” ed by Judith Birsch. It is expensive, so you may want to request it from inter-library loan first. This book covers a great deal more than language, and includes chapters on mathematics, writing, and organization skills. It is written primarily with dyslexics in mind, but many of the ideas are very effective for all students.

In terms of therapies you might want to incorporate into your homeschooling, I would recommend checking out Interactive Metronome (http://www.interactivemetronome.com), Audiblox (http://www.audiblox2000.com) and PACE (http://www.learninginfo.com) for starters. Balametrics (http://www.balametrics.com) offers an OT component that can be useful too.

Mary