Homeschooling Special Needs Part 3: Tips for Success in Intellectual Growth

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." ~James 1:17

Everyone wants to help their child succeed. But what do you do when your child has unique learning abilities/challenges? How do you find strategies to meet their needs while also helping them develop into confident, independent learners?

This can be a challenge, but it's also an opportunity to help your child thrive and is worthy of the extra effort. We’ll help you focus on three main areas where homeschooling can be especially challenging for some kids:

📍Social/Emotional

📍Intellectual

📍Physical

For this third part of this blog series, we’re sharing ideas for intellectual growth that may require a change in your mindset as to how you decide on topics of study and curriculum to use.

Intellectual: Focus on Strengths

If your child has difficulty learning new or a specific content, sprinkle it alongside something they have mastered and feel confident in, and help them make choices and connections with difficult subjects in a way that relates to their interests. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that you get to tailor your curriculum around what excites your student most! 

One way we made this approach work for us was allowing our kids to have a voice in what and how they learned. We did that by letting them review alongside us and help choose curriculum, field trips, co-op classes/teachers and other extracurricular activities. Even taking advantage of shadow days and doing a walk thru of the location or meeting the teacher (perhaps even with a phone call) before they registered was an empowering way for our kids to decide if an experience was something that aligned with their strengths, interests, and preferences. 

In regards to their schedule and planning, trusting their judgment on when and how to do school work went a long way towards building a lifelong love of learning and intellectual growth. We had fun with this by literally laying out the chosen curriculum along with stacks of sticky notes/flags and letting them highlight the content that was of most interest. Knowing their choices as a parent allows you to infuse difficult topics into something they decided to learn about. For example, reading is a struggle, but they’ll do it because the book is about tadpoles and frogs – something they love!

*On a side note, the timeframe of when reading clicks for each child is an important thing to keep in mind. We can’t force our kids to get lost in good books when they want to, say, dog-ear only 3 pages a time for independent reading.😜 This isn’t the time for a power struggle. They are reading, after all!*

Another way to help concepts click is by letting your kids choose learning games they enjoy and trying out new ones. Learning games are perfect opportunities to motivate kids, so feel confident adding those to lesson plans/reading lists.  One way we've helped you do that is by providing a couple of games for you to add to your day.

In our community, we have classes and activities that help kids learn difficult tasks in a fun way that pairs with their interests. For beginning readers and writers, our pre-recorded handwriting class includes virtual pirate-themed game board will keep them motivated. The game board keeps them going as they collect treasure while they learn new letters. Jenny has taught this for years in online class formats and we have a 6-week class available here. Own it to use forever.

You'll also want to add to your plans our Sweetie Treatie Scavenger Hunt Reading Activity. This free download activity is something Kim created and used with her reluctant-reader son who was obsessed with hide-and-seek. We know it will bring delight to your homeschool, too! Your kids will love dashing around the house finding the clues you've made for them on this scavenger hunt.  We give you directions, tips, and cute printable clue cards to get started.

We encourage you to let your kids in on the planning, find out what topics of study interest them, and have fun with it! Remember that allowing our kids to have a voice in what and how they learn and pairing topics they learn with more difficult subjects will empower them and make the journey easier when things get rough.

This concludes our three-part series on Homeschooling Students with Special Needs. We pray it will bless you with applicable ideas. Have something specific you need help with? Contact us and ask. Better yet, join our weekly community calls w/ open Q&A. Every homeschool mom needs a community of support!