Category: Down Syndrome Education at Home

Resources for teaching children with T21 and other special needs

Around the Year Picture Books with Beautiful Illustrations

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Reading picture books with beautiful illustrations is a wonderful way to draw our kids into reading and help them appreciate that which is objectively good and beautiful. Illustrations play an important role in the development of our children’s imaginations, so we want to make sure we give our children lots of beautiful books.

Here are twelve of my favorite illustrators (some classic, some contemporary) for around-the-year picture books with beautiful pictures.

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Christmas Shopping Math Activities for Kids with Special Needs

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As Christmas draws near, it’s fun to take a break from our regular curriculum and dive into Christmas-themed unit studies. My son really enjoys pretending to shop with play money, so here is a set of Christmas shopping cards and activities I made for him.

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Simply Addition Level 2 Flashcards and Worksheets

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Using addition flash cards are a quick and easy way to help our kids practice the addition facts. I searched high and low for rekenrek addition flash cards with large numbers and finally ended up making them myself. For children with Down Syndrome and other visual learners, including a visual aid on the flash cards makes addition more concrete. So that’s what I did:

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FREE Number Sequence Puzzles in Art

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Does your child need extra practice sequencing numbers from 11-20? Here are four FREE sequence puzzles featuring the artwork of Homer Winslow. (I like exposing my kids to beautiful artwork in any way I can!)

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My Favorite Handwriting Tools for Kids with Down Syndrome

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Today I want to talk about my favorite handwriting tools for kids with Down Syndrome. These include markers, crayons, pencils, pens, and pencil grips. What my son with Down Syndrome uses for writing makes a difference not only with the legibility of his writing but also with how long he’s willing to work. So I’m sharing with you the tools that have been most beneficial for his handwriting.

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Simply Addition Level 2: Math for Kids with Down Syndrome

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Here’s an addition workbook for helping children with Down Syndrome and other special needs learn to add with the help of a rekenrek. It follows Simply Addition Level 1 (FREE) and Simply Subtraction Level 1, and it teaches children to add numbers up to twenty.

With the help of a rekenrek, parents and teachers of children with special needs should no longer fear teaching the “dreaded double digits”. A rekenrek is a simple but ingenious little math manipulative that helps students see, understand, and compare quantities. I made this series because it was only after introducing a rekenrek that my son with Down Syndrome began to develop number sense and accuracy in adding numbers. But I could not find a Down-syndrome friendly math program that was based on using a rekenrek. So I had to make one.

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Spelling Frames: Effective Visual Aids for Helping Children with Special Needs to Spell

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When teaching my son with Down Syndrome to spell, I have found spelling frames to be an extremely helpful tool. Spelling can be challenging for children with Down Syndrome who struggle with short term memory and handwriting. There is so much involved in spelling: students need to hold the word that they are supposed to spell in their working memory, segment the word into its phonograms, remember the sequence of those phonograms and hold that sequence in their working memory while recalling how to write each letter.

Spelling frames, accompanied with pictures for each word, are a great visual support. These, along with phonogram tiles, have allowed my son to make progress in spelling with confidence and to become increasingly independent.

Here’s how:

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Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read: A Parent’s Step-by-step Guide

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Teaching children with Down Syndrome to read is not rocket science. You just need patience, consistency, and the right materials. I’ve written many posts on teaching children (with or without Down Syndrome) to read, and I’ve shared many free resources. However, here I want to put everything in one place in a step-by-step guide. I want to make teaching as easy as possible for parents or anyone who wishes to undertake this seemingly daunting task of teaching a child with Down Syndrome to read.

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Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read: Phonics or Sight Words?

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Parents and teachers of children with Down Syndrome may wonder how to start teaching their students with Down Syndrome. Should they start with sight words or phonics?

Currently, the educational trend is strongly in favor of explicit phonics for children at large. However, many experts, such as Sue Buckley, Natalie Hale, and Terry Brown, and many reading experts in Europe who have extensive experience teaching children with T21 recommend starting with sight words first. This is true even in countries such as Spain, where the rules of phonics and pronunciation of Spanish are much more straight forward than English.

Here are five reasons why you should start with sight words, especially if your child is just starting kindergarten:

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