Building A Homeschool Curriculum for the Future - Academics

As I dove into the world of homeschooling I was surprised. I held the stereotype (that I am sure many of you have) that homeschooling is for religious fanatics who don't like government control. This very much exists, but it is only a small slice of all of the ways to homeschool: there are Traditional, Classical, Eclectic, Unschoolers, Socratic, Homestead, Roadschoolers, Montessori, Worldschoolers -a personal fave- and I am sure a bunch I haven't heard of yet. One realization I made quickly was like our family, many families had a neurodivergent child who also floundered in the public school system. Here I thought we were forging a new path by pulling Hendryx from public school only to discover that many other families had already changed course to better serve their child(ren). 

This was both uplifting and upsetting. I am happy that we aren't alone in this process and hopefully will have a ready-made community that shares our challenges, but at the same time, I can't help but worry about the other atypical students we have left behind, the ones with caregivers who aren't as privileged as we are and can only rely on a broken system that is only as good as the county, school, classroom they find themselves in. This issue is something I think about a lot and hope to find a way to address, if even in a small way.

When transitioning to homeschool from public school it is often encouraged for families to deschool. It is typically encouraged to take one month off from educating for every year the child has been in public school. This "time off" is encouraged as many neurodivergent children have deep-rooted trauma from a public school where they were labeled "bad" kids, forced to learn in traditional (thus inappropriate) ways, and generally othered. Because of this, their educational curiosity is often dampened if not destroyed. They need time to rebuild. While I don't feel like we need to go to these extremes for Hendryx, we will start slowly easing into the new routine and adding as we go. Hendryx is a naturally curious child and very interested in specific subjects, as you may have learned if you have ever spoken with him. I mean, what does happen when two black holes collide?! We definitely want to incorporate his specific interests as we move forward with curriculum design. 

So with these thoughts as a guide, I put on my ex-consultant hat and started brainstorming what the ideal educational plan would look like for Hendryx.

I know all parents wonder who their children will become: where will they go to college, what kind of job will they do, where will they live. For Hendryx, we wonder the same things, but really can't count on anything typical. We ask ourselves: Will he go to college, will that even be an option; Will he be able to work in a way that affords him independence? Will he be living with us or Lucille? We just can't assume the typical path. As such, in addition to academics, I knew I wanted to include life and social skills as well as his various therapies in his Education Plan to better fit his specific needs. 

Once I had an understanding of his overall plan I could then start building out each other the educational focus areas: Academic, Therapy, Life, and Social Skills. For the academic structure, I knew I wanted a multi-tiered approach: first, I wanted to have a subject matter expert for both math and language arts; read: NOT ME. We had already built a relationship with an Orton Gillingham (OG) tutor who was excited to work with Hendryx in a broader capacity at At Your Pace Academy. OG is a powerful approach to teaching reading and spelling that uses instruction that is multi-sensory, incremental, and phonics-based, and is perfect for a student like Hendryx who learns in a different way. In Math, I really wanted to have a similar approach, but I had never heard of a math program that was multi-sensory. To no one's surprise of course this exists. I ended up going with an online tutoring company called Made for Math with teachers who specialize in multi-sensory math which is the use of sight, touch, smell, hearing, and movement to make it easier to understand quantities and what math symbols represent. It was a bit of a risk since the live instruction was through a computer a la the COVID years, but I was willing to have my own growth mindset about it if it provided the methodology he needed.

Next, I dove into what curriculums already existed for math and LA. I would be facilitating this turnkey curriculum. Man, let me tell you, homeschool curriculum is a thriving industry. There was no way I would be able to go through each and every curriculum. Instead, I reached out to various homeschool communities online and narrowed it down to programs that families have used successfully with a neurodivergent kiddo. This is what you see below.

From there, I looked at the programs that came up the most and read reviews on those as well as watched lots of online reviews-thank YouTube! For math, I decided to go with a multi-sensory program (are you noticing a theme?) called Math-U-See. I am actually going to start at the very beginning of the program as we realized that Hendryx has some gaps in his mathematical knowledge that go back years and we want to make sure he has a firm foundation to build from. 

Language Arts was not as straightforward. Typical language arts curricula entail a foundation in phonics, spelling, etc. Since we are able to tailor his curriculum to his needs, I question whether it is worthwhile to spend too much time on these areas, especially because his OG tutor will address them. Instead, I would like to focus my LA time on areas that overlap with speech, his biggest challenge area. Focusing on areas like sentence-building, paragraph-building, story-telling etc. will naturally help him expand his oral language skills. I also want to really emphasize reading, as it is his super skill having taught himself to read at an early age. But while his reading skills are quite strong, his comprehension is not, so I would like to help him develop this important conceptual skill. I could not find an out-of-the-box curriculum that suited these needs so instead I went back to the methodology that was used by his Colorado SPED teacher that worked well for him. Unfortunately, the program Project Read was bought out by Heggerty (a powerhouse in the biz), and so literally only had a few days left to buy things-talk about bad timing. Because it was developed more for the public school setting, thus quite spendy, I ended up only buying a few key items and videos of the original curriculum designer teaching in hopes that I could take these things and build them out in a broader way suited to his needs. If it doesn't work (much like any other part of the program), I will adapt and try something else. I will also build writing and language into our unit studies as much as possible so he can practice practice practice.

The last area of his framework is online learning. This can take the form of an online curriculum, games, and videos. I know for many children this can be a major trigger and in general, it gets a lot of slack from traditionalists, but for kids like Hendryx, it is one of the best ways for him to learn. As verbal communication moves so quickly, being able to see something as well as hear it provides the extra time for his brain to process. 

For math, he will be using a curriculum called Boddle which I will create VA Standards-aligned worksheets for him to complete daily. While it is created to be distractedly fun, it does have a strong academic element, providing him with videos of a teacher who will teach him the concept if he is unsure of the answer and correct him if he answers wrong. This program will also send me reports on how he is doing and what he needs to work on. He will have a very similar program called Nessy for LA. It is a game-based program designed for dyslexic learners that is still aligned with state standards and tracks the child's progress. It covers all the LA and as well as things like typing which for a fine-motor challenged kiddo like Hendryx is awesome! I found this program and a few others through a Homeschool Bulk buy group that organizes a bunch of homeschool families together to get better rates on various curricula etc. In addition to these more structured programs, we have a bunch of ipad games that we will use for car rides, restaurants, and vacations to keep the learning going and to complete his academic learning.

As a holder of a Masters in Anthropology, you know I would not leave out the softer sciences. We have a few other paid-for programs for Social Studies/History/Art that I will weave into our curriculum as well as incorporate into our Unit Studies, and of course, will make sure to include experiential/hands-on learning whenever possible because you can't homeschool without some fun adventures!

So that is our academic plan for now...phew!