There is a whole lot of talk about students with special needs and their access to the kinds of help that they need to learn. One school of thought says that special education teachers with years of book knowledge and teaching experience are the only ones who are capable of giving special needs students the kind of education they deserve. This is an institutionalized approach, and it works, to some extent. Another school of thought says that the teacher doesn’t have to have special knowledge or years of experience, as long as the teacher has access to a good curriculum that assists them in providing for their special needs students. Homeschoolers of special needs children tend to fall into this category. Even though I’m a homeschooler, I’m not sure which camp I want to throw my hat in with. My daughter is gifted, and ADHD. And I find those two things together to be quite a handful. I’m fortunate to have a great curriculum, and a child who can read anything I put in front of her. While she is difficult at times, we manage well in our home school. I see other people in my local home school group that have children with more specialized or exotic problems. And I can see where those parents might need more assistance to find the methods most useful in teaching their children. I mean, honestly, I only deal with gifted and ADHD. Some parents have children with pronounced learning, sensory, and social difficulties. Some of those parents deal with more than one child in their family with learning difficulties or special education concerns. Can a parent handle such pronounced difficulties at home? I believe they can, especially if they have access to services that will help them deal with their child’s specific issues. Parents have a vested interest in getting the best education possible for their children, and they live with their children, day in and day out. This means that they are more aware of when their children will be more receptive to learning, what triggers make for bad school days, and what subjects the child needs the most help with. Most of all, no one loves these children more than their families, and the individualized education that can be provided at home can make the difference between a child who can learn and function, and a child who gets caught up in a system that does not learn to their full potential. Parents of special needs children sometimes need special help, and different methods to teach their children. They need support, and access to services that will aid in that teaching, and they need resources that are specially designed for their child’s own specific strengths and weaknesses. In the end, is that any more than any of us need or want? We have the desire for our children to learn, we have the will to teach our children, and we want them to succeed. Those are some serious motivators!

My youngest one has been sick for about 4 days with a high fever so I decided to take her to the doctor.  Well….she has pneumonia!  That wasn’t news we wanted during Christmas.  After a couple of days down she was getting very bored.  She is one that isn’t able to sit still for long.  She asked if she could do some school!!  Really?  I knew with her special needs and learning style I need to take advantage of when she wants to do extra school work.  Creating diversity is a challenge at times but it is worth it in the long run.  Anything to keep her attention for a hour or so!

At the dinner table she was telling us what she had been working on.  Now let me remind you she talks fast because she has so much on her mind she wants to just spit it out before the thought leaves her brain.  Those are her words to be exact!  I am constantly telling her slow down and speak correctly.  When she gets that excited her vocabulary goes out the window.  Improving vocabulary has always been top on my list.  Telling her the way you speak tells volumes of your intelligence and self confidence.  Some day my girl will understand and hopefully thank me for taking the time to speak correctly.

My son was a 6-year-old (almost 7) when I began teaching him to read, and it seemed as though he just wasn’t getting it. He had learned some phonics in kindergarten and recognized some sight words, but putting together everything he had learned just wasn’t happening. I tried everything from McGuffey readers to other phonics books and workbooks.

I then turned to online learn to read activities, and he took to these very quickly. He liked the animation and the online short books and stories. Soon he had completed many online reading lessons, as well as his phonics materials and books. I continued reading him stories on a daily basis. One day I realized he was reading well, and he began reading to me.

Then I began thinking, “Does he really understand what he’s reading?,” so I gave him oral book reports, asked him to explain passages he had read, had him write short summaries of his books, etc. Not only was he decoding words, but his reading comprehension was at a high level. He had exploded the reading code, and in a period of about 4 months, he proceeded to read 125 books–without me prompting him. I was overjoyed, because I had a child who loved to read!

Phonics and decoding are only part of learning to read; reading comprehension is more complicated. Your child can decode words (break them down phonetically) and really not understand what he’s reading. Sometimes when a child is learning to read, his energy is focused on decoding, so it’s hard to focus on comprehension too.

Online reading comprehension programs allow children to interact with the text, include vocabulary questions, and test them to see if they understand the text. There are read along stories as well as opportunities for children to be read to via the online audio. This makes interaction and comprehension a priority.

Making sure your daughter (or son) becomes a fluent reader with excellent reading comprehension skills can be done with the help of an online reading comprehension program.

I’d love to hear about your homeschool reading program; please share your experience or ask questions.

It didn’t take me long to get used to the idea of online homeschooling, because I began teaching my son at home via a home-based virtual public school that used online resources. They recommended that younger children do about fifteen to twenty percent of their work on the computer. I only used this home-based school for about six weeks, because I saw their curriculum wasn’t working for my son.

After this, I tried a labor intensive free curriculum that required me to print lots of books, keep lots of records, and spend lots of time preparing lessons. I did this for awhile, and for all my effort, I received an emphatic “boring” from my then 6-year-old son. So, I continued to search for an affordable curriculum. Homeschooling was becoming pure drudgery, and each day, I pieced together school work for my son, as I continued to search for excellent, affordable homeschool materials. I finally happened upon an online homeschooling curriculum that sounded too good to be true. I tried it out before I ever allowed my precocious 6-year-old to try it, and after reviewing a few Language Arts and Math lessons, I knew he would love it. I was right, and three and a half years later, he’s still loving it.

Online homeschooling resources can be helpful to your child and to you too. If your child is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner, the online interactive lessons will keep her engaged. The online homeschool resources will help you too, because as your child matures, she will do her lessons independently, while you tend to your younger children or get things done around the house.

Once you begin using the online homeschooling materials, you won’t abandon your books, your unit studies, your hands-on projects, or your field trips; online resources will only be part of your home school, and your child will look forward to the lessons. You can even use those lessons to reward him for doing well with his other homeschool work.

You may have toyed with the idea of homeschool online but thought better of it, because you felt like the computer would be teaching your child instead of you. However, most homeschoolers use online homeschooling in combination with more traditional methods.

Homeschooling is all about freedom of educational choice and options. If online homeschooling materials work for your child, then don’t be afraid to use them. You may be a homeschooling mom who works from home and need some free time to check emails, answer phones, or search the internet. Online homeschooling materials will free you to do those things during the day and will also free your child to learn independent study and work skills.

Do you remember the commercials for “Hooked on Phonics?” “I am hooked on phonics. I am learning to read . . . ” Those lines are etched in my memory.

“Hooked on Phonics” was the way thousands of parents helped their children learn to read in the 80s and 90s. Some still use it, but now your child can be hooked on phonics online, because homeschoolers are avid users of the internet for educational purposes.

I used an online phonics curriculum to help my son learn phonics, along with workbooks, and of course, reading, reading, and more reading to him. He’s in 4th grade and is reading at 8th grade level. He loved the interactive piece where an onscreen character would pronounce a phonetic sound or word, and he repeated it.

Another part of intensive phonics online, my son loved was clicking on the right answer. The program would present him with a choice among three or more answers, then he would make his choice. If he got the answer right, the online character would clap or say, “Great job, you’re a phonics superstar!” or if the answer was incorrect, the character might say, “Almost got it, try again.” He would glow when he got the correct answer, and he would be challenged to keep trying if his answer was incorrect.

Children love this approach, because there are no “Xs” for incorrect answers–just encouragement to continue moving along the positive phonics path. For correct answers, there are lots of bells and whistles, and this serves as motivation for your child to keep up the excellent work.

There’s no doubt that intensive phonics is needed to teach a child to learn to read. Yes, there are sight words that don’t fit into the phonics rules, and there are always exceptions to those rules. But once your child learns phonics, she will become a better reader. She will always “sound out” new words, because that is what she’s learned.

Your child will apply all the phonics rules and word sounds to words he’s never seen before. Although he may not necessarily pronounce the new word correctly, when he applies what he’s learned, he’ll be closer to a correct pronunciation than those who learned to read by the whole language method.

Don’t you wish there had been online phonics when you were learning to read? My son found it to be a fun and exciting way to learn!

Share your experience with phonics by leaving a comment.