Author: Mary Cooney

Mary is a homeschooling mother of six. She blogs at mercyformarthas.com.

A FREE Book of Poems for Second Grade

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Here’s a FREE book of poems I made for my son with Down Syndrome for second grade. If you and your kids enjoyed Poems for First Grade, you’ll enjoy this compilation of poems and illustrations.

Memorizing and reciting is becoming a lost art, but there is so much to be gained from it — for all children. Memorizing and reciting poetry develops the memory and the imagination and fills the mind with beautiful imagery and language. For children with speech delays, it also helps to develop articulation and pacing in speech.

But most of all, poetry should be studied for the enjoyment and beauty of it!

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Gr. 1-2 Summer Bridge Worksheets for Kids with Special Needs

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Summer is almost here! So today I’m sharing a set of summer-themed worksheets I made for my son last year to help him retain the skills he had learned during the school year. We need to keep those basic reading, writing, and math skills sharp!

This set contains three units:

  1. What I Wear During Summer
  2. Summer Food and Drinks, and
  3. At the Beach

Take a look:

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Let’s Learn About Money: A FREE Unit on Counting Coins

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Here’s a set of worksheets I made for the kids in our Down Syndrome co-op to help them recognize and count coins of the same type.

Many of the money units I’ve seen are either only in black and white, or too busy. This makes it difficult for our kids to use. Our students need clean, uncluttered worksheets with clear large pictures and text. They also have better success when there is only ONE type of activity per page.

Here’s what I made for our first unit on money:

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Stop and Go! FREE Sight Word Cards and Readers

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Did you know that many children with Down Syndrome as young as 3 years old can learn to read sight words?

If you’re wondering whether or not your child is ready, here’s a free way to try.

I made this set of car-themed sight word cards and readers for a boy in our co-op who just wouldn’t sit at a desk.

So, we sat on the floor and played cars. And snuck in some sight-word learning. When I showed him the word “Go”, we’d yell “Go!”, and he would zoom a car across the floor. Then I’d show him the word “Stop” when the car stopped. Next I took out a car ramp, and I showed him the word “Car” or “Truck” before he could let a car or truck go down the ramp. Eventually, he had to read “car” or “truck” before zooming down a vehicle.

Some of the best learning happens when we incorporate play.

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FREE Skip Counting Puzzles

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Skip counting is an important math skill, especially for counting money. Many children with special needs require extra practice with skip counting to master the correct sequence of numbers. Providing a variety of ways to practice keeps them interested. One of our favorite ways is practicing with puzzles. Here are FREE puzzles for counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. They are a fun, motivating way to practice skip counting.

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Simply Subtraction Level 2 Workbook: Math for Kids with (or without) Down Syndrome

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Here’s the Simply Subtraction Level 2 workbook for helping children with Down Syndrome and other special needs learn to subtract with the help of a rekenrek. It follows Simply Addition Level 1, Simply Subtraction Level 1, and Simply Addition Level 2. The Simply Subtraction Level 2 Workbook teaches children to subtract numbers within twenty.

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Introducing a Catholic AI Platform Parents can Trust

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I just had to share this with you.

Because parenting is hard. Today, more than ever.

As most of you know, one of the hardest parts of parenting is managing our children’s use of addictive screen-based tech: Smart phones. Social media. The internet. These are wreaking widespread havoc on the mental and emotional health of our youth. And navigating screen-based tech with our kids and teens has been challenging… exhausting, actually.

If parenting weren’t hard enough, along comes AI, that powerful tool that is rapidly changing the landscape of innovation, work, and education.

So parents have yet one more thing to worry about, monitor, and try to keep up with.

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A FREE Confession Book for Children with Down Syndrome

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Here’s an adapted confession booklet I made for my son and his friends in our Special Needs Atrium. When it was time to prepare my son for First Confession, I knew he would need a lot of visual aids in order to understand what the sacrament was about and in order to communicate his sins and his contrition to the priest. So I designed this especially for children who are non-verbal or whose speech is limited and still emerging.

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Free Picture Addition Cards for Kindergarten and Grade 1

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Here’s a set of Picture Addition Cards that help children understand the concept of commutativity (that is, 1+2 and 2+1 both equal 3). Kids with Down Syndrome and other special needs require a lot of practice with pictures to understand and master addition facts. So I made these for my son, and as always, sharing them with you.

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