How To Homeschool If Your Child Is a Diverse Learner or Has an IEP

Need some ideas on how to make schooling at home with your diverse learner more tolerable for you both? Check out these ideas!

TRANSCRIPT
When I was a little girl, I would love sitting at my desk and organizing my colored pencils. I loved sketching dresses for my Barbies, filling pages of coloring books and I was one of those kids who loved doing homework. I loved school so much that all I wanted to do was play teacher and eventually I became one. This is the exact opposite of my husband who hated school and wanted nothing more than to play video games all day. As his Kindergarten teacher so eloquently put it on his first report card, Jonathan can do so much, but he is distracted and lazy. 

Our kids haven’t started school yet so I don’t know what they’re going to be like (although I have a feeling we each have one minion). But as a former teacher and mom of a preschooler with a diverse learning style I can say for a fact that if you have a child with any unique needs schooling at home is probably very hard. Your child may be jumping up and down, you may not be getting through any of the school work sent by teachers, or you may just be exhausted from the day to day caring of your child to do any kind of academic anything.
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Providing a safe environment, basic needs, and a calm atmosphere is the most important thing you can do for your child. Like I mentioned in Tuesday’s episode true learning can not happen if your brain is in survival mode and the mere fact that we’re in this new reality can put a child or even adult in this state. 

If you do feel like you’ve gotten to a place where your child is able to learn then I have 3 mini quick tips for how to make it more tolerable for you both. These have helped my students in the classroom not get overwhelmed with work and I also apply these to when I do academic work with my own preschooler.

First, learning is most authentic when experiencing what it is you’re learning. You are more likely to remember how to cut a pizza in half as opposed to looking at a circle with a line through it. So whenever possible, provide a learning experience for your child to engage with the content. Something like acting out the story or using legos to figure out the math problem would work. Also remember that focusing more than 15-20 min is hard even for adults so have realistic focus expectations for your child’s age and ability. A great way to do this and to keep them motivated as well is to use a visual timer. This provides a concrete way of quantifying what is expected for you both.

Second, choose curriculum wisely. Teachers have been given such a hard task to provide online learning in this short amount of time and they may not have been able to differentiate their lessons. So really choose what you think your child can do and feel free to touch base with teacher as they know your child almost as well as you if not better when it comes to their academic abilities. If your school district hasn’t implemented e-learning or its really thin, you can check out learning websites like Khan Academy which is free or ABC Mouse.

Third, build in supports for your child such as brain breaks, adaptive seating, and focus rewards. When I knew something would  be really challenging for a student, I’d allow them to START with a brain break which would be a dance party, or doing an activity they enjoyed such as a puzzle or board game then we’ve dive into the lesson. Using brain breaks during lessons or school work can work also as long as they’re not more of a distraction.

Most importantly, remember this is a unique time in everyone’s life so If you need to put academics on pause, work on life skills like cooking and cleaning and character education. When your child goes back to school it wont matter where she lands academically, what will matter is that you got through this together and can appreciate the normalcy we didn’t even realize w