New, and Special Needs

[wife2jamie]

I have just purchased Beyond with everything required (except math), and am looking forward to this new school year. I have always home schooled, and this year will have 5 at home...the kids are 14, 14, 13, 5, and 4. All but the 5 yo have Down Syndrome. I would love to hear anyone else's experience and advice on using this curriculum with special needs kids. (I have graduated 3 NT kids, and have one more (9yo) in a special needs school.)

[LynnH]

Welcome to the board and welcome to HOD. I have been using HOD for 6 years now with my son who has dysgraphia due to mild Cerebral Palsy, at least that is our best guess at a diagnosis. His neurologist can't figure him out because his MRI says he should be in a wheelchair and yet he is able to do things like back flips, front flips and American Ninja Warrior type obstacles. His main issues are hand tremors that severely affect his fine motor skills as well as some short term memory issues. What I have found is that HOD actually works very well with kids with special needs because 1) it is predictable as far as they get in to a routine of knowing what to expect each day and the activities are on a rotating basis so about half way through the guide or sooner they know what is expected of them and 2) it might present similar information from multiple sources and in many guides there is connections between subjects such as science and history. I also like that in the younger guides there is movement incorporated into the learning which is great for the kinesthetic learner. The other plus is that the boxes in Beyond aren't meant to take very long. I was a Pediatric Physical Therapist before I became a stay at home mom and specialized in treating children with Down Syndrome and I know endurance can be an issue. The nice thing with the box set up is you can take breaks as often as you need to and still easily pick back up where you left off without disrupting the flow of the day.

My advice would be to try and find a routine where you are doing the boxes in the same order each day and that the boxes that might be more challenging for your dc are alternated with the ones that are more fun or easier. My son quickly figured out that he wanted to alternate the boxes that involved writing which is very difficult for him, with the boxes such as the history project which he enjoys. In the older guides where they do their own reading he made sure to alternate reading boxes with other things also if at all possible because he loses concentration if he reads too long.

The other thing we have done is get somewhat inventive with things that require writing. I limited the writing to what he could handle without frustration and then for other things he either types, dictates to me or does it orally. Now that he is in the older guides I have apps that allow me to scan things into the Ipad(with publisher permission if that is required) and then he can type right onto the worksheets using his Ipad.

[marybeth33]

I began using Beyond last year with my 13yo special needs daughter. She is new to speaking english, most likely FAS and would be classified as mild MR. With her dance class and our co-op, we made it about half way through. We found it a perfect fit! We did our best to do all as written, since I know from my using HOD with my other kiddos, that the skills built are such an essential part of this curricculum. But everything was gentle enough for her to love her first experience at homeschooling.
Best wishes for an awesome year!
Mary Beth