I'm considering homeschooling. For many reasons. One of them being, I don't want to fight the school so he can join the typical kids getting a mediocre education. He will be starting kindergrten next school year. I have alot of friends who homeschool, only one of them has a child with DS. I've looked into it and I'm impressed and inspired by all of the services and programs that are avaliable to the parents who homeschool. We definitely don't need to worry about the lack of socialization anymore. In fact I think he'll get more interaction this way.

Please post your experiences and most importantly the curriculums you have found work well with your child that has DS. thanks !!!!





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2010 08:18AM by artist30.

There is a website, I think it is Play to Talk with Dr.James McDonald. They have a great parent forum and lots of the parents homeschool. I hear ya on the mediocre education and the fight to get it. What is the district "offering" you and Will? I'm curious as I'm also mighty disappointed with Max's experience at school and my lack of options. I do believe homeschooling would push me right over the edge though. LOL! I must say that in the few short days since Max has been out of school, he is much happier and waaaay more verbal. Guess the pressure is off!

Cris,Emma(9),Max(5),and Sam(3)

and I think my husband is afraid of what craziness he'll come home to if I choose to homeschool. But, it's only kindergarten , I figure if I want to try it, that would be a good age to start. I also can see that the inconsistency that is occuring in structure and discipline between school and home for Will frustrats him, and therefore he'll act out sometimes because of it. So I am curious as to how he'll respond to homeschooling once we get into the swing of things. KWIM? (besides, wine and chocolate, wine chocolate. LOL kidding. really.)

There is a yahoo group Homeschooling and Down Syndrome. I am not active on the board, however the board is very active. I sometimes will get 20 or more emails a day. When I have time I go through the emails that I think will have info to help me. We have been homeschooling Drake for 2 and 3/4 years now. I do not use a boxed curriculum. I have made several of Drakes activities. I also use educational workbooks that I get from bookstores. I make copies so that the pages can be reused for repitition. Drake is escaping gotta go for now. All is fine however I need to get back to him. I am eager to see what others use as well.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2010 09:44PM by drakesmom.

not that homeschooling is set in stone for me. I just thought I could get alot if info from then to help aide me in my decision. It's good to hear it works for some.

Were you able to join the group? I hope you were able to. There has been a discussion lately on the choice of homeschooling. Good luck with what ever you choose.

I'm waiting to be confirmed. not sure what the hold up is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2010 06:18PM by artist30.

Try submitting again. Write a note about how you tried to join and was checking to see when you might be approved. If I remember I think I had to resubmitt for approval. The moderators want to make sure that people have an invested interest and not someone joining to stir up trouble. When you are confirmed you will recieve a few emails with specific rules to follow. The rules are just your basic ones from any site that you would join.

I know I'm really late to this thread...story of my life.....

but we are homeschooling Parker.

I'm creating my own curriculum because there's no way I could place a worksheet, etc., in front of him and tell him to go at it.

Well, I could....but

I'm going to try to better document our homeschooling experiences both on Parker's blog as well as www.hsbapost.com.


We are hitting the alphabet hard this year and continuing to increase this scope with shapes, and colors. He's got the matching and sorting thing down. He'll give me the color I ask for within a ray of 3 or 4.


He now will sign both the color and the noun....such as red ball instead of just ball.

And we are working on three sign sentences such as 'more swing please'

We will be bringing numbers into the mix this year too.

The handwriting thing is s.l.o.w. He can make his vertical and horizontal lines no sweat, but he hates the tracing of shapes.

Lots of repetition, hand over hand, breaking down tasks to their simplest steps, etc. Once Parker has mastered a goal in one setting I then introduce it within another. This helps him learn how to assimilate information so that he can take what he knows and transfer it to other situations.

I have the day broken up in several activities.

Handwriting
Alphabet (pre-reading)
Math
Colors
Shapes
PECS/Sign

and.....geez, I need to go and look at my lesson plans and I'm too lazy to go grab it. But you get the idea.

It's a lot of work, but I'm really pleased with how far he has come.

Who knew that I would be one day teaching a nonverbal kid with Ds? But, boy am I grateful that I get to!