We tried this FREE Easy To Follow Homeschool Curriculum: Brightly Beaming Resource's Early Childhood Resources For The Home, we started with (Step 1: Preparatory Curriculum). This step basically teaches a child to recognize letters, numbers, colors and shapes. With my child, I can see that her learning was not totally established yet at her age of 6, she knows the alphabet and can read them, she knows the sounds of each alphabet, she can count to 20 but skips one number when she came to #14 or #15, she can recognize some shapes and she doesn't know much about colors. My daughter Lauren was already 6 when we started on this step in the curriculum. She is a bit delayed in some ways and learning, she was diagnosed with "Autism Spectrum Disorder" in 2012 at the age of 4.
NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED WHEN MY CHILD WAS ENROLLED IN A REGULAR SCHOOL TWICE
When she was 4 she can't really focus and it's hard to teach her to write, trace, or copy even simple straight lines. We enrolled her in a daycare center when she was 2, in this center they teach children the basic foundation of learning but Lauren didn't really learn anything when she was there for 7 months, the teacher there told me she is not cooperating in learning.
The following year at the age of 3, we enrolled Lauren again in another preschool but after 3 weeks the teacher called my attention that she doesn't have any retention and suggest she be transferred to a Special Education. In special education they referred her to try Occupational Therapy, so we enrolled her in Occupational Therapy, this was before she was officially diagnosed with Autism.
MY DECISION TO DO AND TRY HOMESCHOOLING
Since Lauren has started and done "Occupational Therapy" in 2012, in a couple of months she can focus more on tasks and writes and traces simple lines and then letters until eventually she was able to write the letters and alphabet on her own. I want to be able to help her establish what she already knows and work on what she doesn't know yet at home. This is basically my own effort and way of supporting her in this area and aspect of basic learning and education.
Since, I can see that teachers are not able to handle or work with her in school with regards to this aspect, teacher's work and attention in school are also limited and so we cannot always guarantee proper progress and learning if we wait and leave it all to them, so I thought why not do some learning at home? I've always read and heard about home schooling online and other parents who have children with special needs who are doing it. So I did some research and found this site that has links to some free homeschooling resources and one of the sites recommended there was "Brightly Beaming Resources", I look over this site in December of 2014 and decided to try out the "Preparatory Curriculum" and work on it with Lauren in January 2015. I started with Step 1 based on where Lauren already was in terms of some learning skills she has already acquired.
OUR EXPERIENCE WITH THIS FREE HOMESCHOOL RESOURCE
We were able to complete step 1 in July 2015 and so far it's great because now Lauren can count to 100 and she knows all shapes and colors as well and she was exposed to various themes, stories & songs here, also arts and creativity that was not even taught or done much in school. Had I waited and not done anything, a year would just be wasted and Lauren not progressing or gone anywhere in terms of basic learning and education.
It's great because with this curriculum which is FREE, you have an idea of what to do and you know where you're headed. Whereas if you do it by yourself without any definite pattern, you are not guided on what should be tackled or done, everything is just disorganized but following this curriculum everything is organized and you have a direction on what to do and what to teach your child step by step.
You can take a look at the curriculum pattern and information about this Step here. This step lasts for 26 weeks. This curriculum was not developed for a special needs child but I just did some modifications in terms of how I would teach the lessons or topics in a way that would suit my child.
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