What’s The Best Homeschool Curriculum for Autism?
Homeschooling a child with autism is an increasingly popular option for parents who worry about how a school will meet the unique needs of their autistic child. In this blog post we’ll take a look at how to choose the most suitable educational homeschool resources and activities for your child with autism.
What homeschool curriculum will help a non-verbal child with autism?
If your child with autism is not yet verbal, or minimally verbal, finding educational resources which meet their unique needs will help them to learn and make great progress.
Most of the year long curricula used by homeschool parents are written for NT kids who are working at a specific grade level across all subject areas. Your pre-verbal child with autism will have strengths in some subject areas and difficulties in others, and are unlikely to be working at a single grade level in each subject.
It’s important to start your homeschool journey with activities which build your child’s Speech and Language skills so that they can interact with you. My 10 Speech & Language Strategies Workbook for Autism Parents will help you do this. Remember to show interest in what your child is interested in, and include their interests in your learning activities. For example if your child likes frogs, then play with frog toys and puppets, look at frog books, sing songs about frogs, paint pictures of frogs, etc.
Once you build on your child’s interaction and attention skills with play activities and fun games, then you will be ready to use resources to help your child expand on their vocabulary.
If you’re new to Homeschooling your child with autism, or you want to make some changes to your homeschool, check out my blog post How Do You Homeschool A Child With Autism?
My post How to Help Kids with Autism Who Are Non-Verbal will give you ideas and strategies for teaching your child to speak and understand language.
What homeschool curriculum should I purchase for my verbal child with autism?
All-in-one homeschool curricula save parents time searching online for resources, and planning, but if they don’t meet the individual needs of your child with autism, then it’s going to be hard work for you to teach your child, and it’s not going to be much fun for them either. Big curricula also cost a lot of money, so if you spend hundreds of dollars on a curriculum which you intend to use for every lesson, but the pages are too busy, or the concepts aren’t broken down into small enough steps, or your child just doesn’t like the color of the books, then you’re going to become frustrated and your child will too.
The first step in planning your own homeschool curriculum for your autistic child is to plan what goals your child will work on for the next 3 months, 6 months and 1 year. I’ve created FREE Autism Homeschool Goal Planners to help you do this.
Your child might enjoy filling in workbooks for math, but they hate writing for language so you opt for clip cards for that. It’s ok to use different types of resources from different books, workbooks and websites to teach different concepts and subjects.
Choosing individual resources and activities which meet these goals for rather than using a one-size-fits-all whole year curriculum will help you create a homeschool program which meets your child’s strengths, supports them with their challenges, and incorporates their interests. If your child is interested in robots, or ocean animals, for example, then look for ways to include these in your academic lessons as well as crafts and games.
It’s worth noting that not all homeschool activities for your child with autism need to be sit-down, written tasks. Cut and paste sheets, clip cards and task mats don’t require any writing. When you are homeschooling your child with autism you don’t hav eto only teach traditional academic skills. You can teach daily living skills such as cooking, laundry and shopping. For an older child who is already interacting with different people in your community and social networks, you might also want to work on more complex Social Skills which will assist them.
My Autism Homeschool Easy Read Guide for Parents will assist you as plan your learning environment and your homeschool timetable.
I have also written a Free Homeschool Goal Planner. Once you have decided what goals and skills you are going to be working on you can save money when Build Your Own Discounted Bundle of resources from Curriculum for Autism.
Remember to check the regulations of your country or state to make sure you are meeting their requirements for academic standards, hours spent teaching, and also for record keeping.
Take a closer look at my resources for:
I hope you’ve found this post helpful!
Kirsten
P.S. If you have any questions about this post or about any of my resources, I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me at kirsten@curriculumforautism.com
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About Me:
If you’re new to Curriculum For Autism, here’s some background on how it came about. About 15 years ago, when school didn’t work out for my son (who is now an adult), I gave up work as a teacher to homeschool him. One of the best aspects of homeschooling was the flexibility it gave him to work on math (his favorite subject) above grade level, and Language Arts below grade level, without any pressure to be meeting specific standards or targets by arbitrary ages. As a General Education and a Special Education teacher I loved creating resources to meet my students’ needs, so it was natural to me to also create resources for my son. I began Curriculum For Autism to help teachers & parents find the resources they need too.