Homeschooling a Child with Down Syndrome: Effective Strategies for Teaching

Fifteen or so years ago, I began homeschooling my oldest child, and I’ve been homeschooling ever since. I’ve homeschooled five of my kids from preschool through sixth to eight grade. Even though my children differ widely in temperament, I eventually settled on a piece-meal curricula that worked well for everyone with some minor variations and changes over the years.

And then Junior came along. Junior, with his extra special chromosome, his zest for life and learning, and his gritty stubborn streak. Very early on, I realized that teaching him would be a whole new adventure. So I was not surprised when I came across the following:

Research has shown that young people with Down syndrome not only take longer to learn new skills but also learn differently in some key areas. Additionally, they benefit from some teaching strategies that are different to those typically used in education. Down Syndrome: Guidelines for Inclusive Education, International Down Syndrome Society and Down Syndrome Education International, Dec. 2021

As I read and researched about teaching children with T21, I began to keep a rolling list of best teaching strategies and practices. These have been incredibly helpful for homeschooling Junior and teaching three more little boys with T21 who come to my home for a Down Syndrome co-op.

Today I’m sharing these strategies with you and how we can use them at home.

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Our Favorite Books and Publishers for Emergent Readers

As many of you know, my son Junior, who has T21, has become a voracious reader. Hence, we make several trips to the library to keep him well supplied. To simplify my never ending job of finding reading material, I find a publisher/series that I like and order as many books from that series that I can from the library. Here are our favorite books and publisher series for emergent readers.

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Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read: Our Top Ten Resources for Beginning Phonics

Last fall, I began teaching Junior how to decode words. Having taught my five other children to read, I knew that I would have to make each step along the way very incremental and use materials that were hands-on and visual. I was ready for the process to be slow and bumpy, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly Junior learned to decode CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.

So today I’m sharing with you some videos of Junior at work and the resources and methods we used that worked best.

Continue reading “Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read: Our Top Ten Resources for Beginning Phonics”

Short Vowel Stories Adapted for Children with Down Syndrome

As promised in my last post about our top ten resources for teaching beginning phonics, here is a collection of Short Vowel Stories adapted for children with T21. I wrote these for my oldest child when she was learning to read. Since I’m all about adapting materials for children with T21, of course I had to adapt these stories for Junior. I spent a fair amount of time adapting the stories for him, increasing the font size, putting double spaces between each word, and adding a lot more visuals to help with reading comprehension. So, when he buzzed through these stories, I have to admit I was pleased, but I also had that unsettling feeling you get when you spend two hours cooking up a wonderful meal and then your teenage sons devour it in five minutes.

Anyways, I think this collection of very short stories will help your children (with or without Down Syndrome) enjoy success as they first read phonetically. And yes, for you they’re free.

Continue reading “Short Vowel Stories Adapted for Children with Down Syndrome”

Building Phonemic Awareness: Three Free Books about Rhyming

Teaching children about rhyming is one of the first steps in building phonemic awareness and preparing them to read phonetically. It’s one of the reasons why so many books for preschoolers use rhymes.

To help Junior learn about rhyming, I made three silly books about rhyming. They’re silly because Junior gets a kick out of anything silly. When I read the first book to him, he giggled so much I just had to make more.

Of course, I thought your preschoolers might enjoy them, too. So here they are:

Continue reading “Building Phonemic Awareness: Three Free Books about Rhyming”

Teaching Preschoolers with Down Syndrome to Read – Part 2 (And Why We’re not doing Phonics, Yet)

Last post, I shared some videos showing how Junior is learning to read using See and Learn Phrases by Down Syndrome Education. We demonstrated the first four steps of learning to read using sight words.

Today, I’m sharing videos of the last two steps and discussing why we’re breezing through with sight words instead of slogging through phonics.

Continue reading “Teaching Preschoolers with Down Syndrome to Read – Part 2 (And Why We’re not doing Phonics, Yet)”

Introducing “Teach Me to Read Duets, Books 1 and 2” — the sequels to “Short Vowel Stories”

For those of you who have used Short Vowel Stories to help teach your children to read, you’ll be glad to know (I hope!) that two more books are now available: Teach Me to Read Duets, Books 1 and 2.

Continue reading “Introducing “Teach Me to Read Duets, Books 1 and 2” — the sequels to “Short Vowel Stories””