Teaching my son with Down Syndrome to write letters and numbers has been a long, slow process. But little by little we’re getting there! Many schools and homeschoolers use the wonderful handwriting program by Learning Without Tears (formerly Handwriting Without Tears.) But I have needed to adapt some of their materials in order for Junior to be successful.
Continue reading “More Handwriting Worksheets for Children with (or without) Down Syndrome” →
Here’s a cute set of handwriting worksheets that will help your child learn to write lowercase letters. Similar to the uppercase set, these have dots which show your child where to begin forming each letter. In addition, each worksheet comes with verbal prompts to help your child learn the order of strokes.
Continue reading “Let’s Learn Letters: Lowercase !” →
Here are more FREE picture and sight word cards for those of you teaching your kids to read words by sight. This is a set of thirty-eight pictures of items around the house, some clothing, and favorite foods. Use them to build vocabulary, teach sight words, talk about word function, and for sorting.
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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” →
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” →
As I mentioned in my last post on Handwriting Skills for Preschoolers, here is another set of handwriting sheets. These are meant to be used once your child is proficient with the first set of Let’s Learn Letters and is ready for narrower (but not too narrow!) lines to trace.
Continue reading “Let’s Learn Letters 2! – More Handwriting Worksheets for Preschoolers with (or without) Down Syndrome” →
Here’s a little Mother’s Day gift for you! For the month of May, I’m teaching Junior to pray the “Hail Mary”. Since he’s such a visual learner, I made these cards for him: an art masterpiece for each line of the “Hail Mary”. I hope they’ll help him to understand the meaning of each line in the prayer as he memorizes it. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Looking at beautiful sacred art is truly a path to prayer. If you have little ones who are just learning to pray, I hope this will help:
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This past fall, Junior and I really began working on early handwriting skills in a consistent and systematic manner. It’s been fun to watch his progress. Not only are his hands getting stronger, he is also developing better dexterity. Little by little. So today I’m sharing with you some of our favorite resources and methods for building handwriting skills.
Continue reading “Handwriting Skills for Preschoolers with (or without) Down Syndrome” →
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” →
For those of you using DSE’s See and Learn Reading Program, here are ten more free books. These books are meant to go with See and Learn Sentences 1. Each book reinforces new words and reviews old ones. New books keep my little guy highly motivated, which I why I keep making them 🙂
Continue reading “Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read with See and Learn: Ten More Free Books!” →
Mercy for Marthas