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Question

I have six kids. I will be home schooling one of our sixth graders. He has severe add and odd, along with depression. Our school is just not willing to help. He does have a 504 plan they are not following, infact they wanted to drop it so I had to get his therapist involved.

I live in Indiana and have been given a few links for the laws, etc. What I am looking for are advice re. books. I will prob. use books as that seems the easiest for now. I used the Saxon Math and Shurley English program the last 2 summers. We have a 12 weeks break so we would do a review every so often over the summer. I really like these programs so I will prob. stick with them.

Anyone had good experience/reports for science, health, geography, history, reading? What about planners? Anyone have advice on what planner is best.

Answer 1

Here is a place that may be helpful for finding info on special needs homeschooling.

http://www.nathhan.org

You need to figure out what method you want to use to teach.  Here's some info on homeschooling methods:

http://www.successful-homeschooling.com/...

For science, I like

http://www.apologia.com

For geography, I like

http://geomatters.com/products/details.a...

For history, I like

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/childswor...

http://www.learning-adventures.org/

For reading, I've heard good things about:

http://www.totallanguageplus.com/

http://www.easygrammar.com

Here are some good unit studies that combine all subjects:

http://www.sonlight.com

http://www.winterpromise.com

http://www.fiarhq.com

Below is some general info:

Answer 2

I think your son will do well and flourish in a homeschool environment.  Congratulations on your decision to homeschool him!

My son is only in 2nd grade, so I haven't familiarized myself with 6th grade curriculum.  Regarding planners, Homeschool Tracker is an excellent online scheduler/planner, and the Basic Edition is free; the link is below:

http://www.homeschooltracker.com/tracker...

I hope this helps out some.

Answer 3

Sounds like you already have solid math and english programs picked out. I wouldn't even bother with actual textbooks for the remaining subjects. I would suggest doing unit studies.

For example, this past month my son has been studying World War 2. We borrowed books from our library (on various reading levels), videos, audio tapes, used internet sites (such as from the Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago and the History channel websites).

His history, geography, science, writing and even health all revolve around the study of the war. Far more interesting than textbooks!

For planners, I used a regular assignment book that has space for each day. Now that my son is high school, he decides what to do on each day, noting the subject on each day and then checking each item as he completes it. You might want to help your sixth grade do something similar. When I started using this style with my son, I would tell him how much material I thought he should cover that week and then let him set up the schedule for each day.

This site has some good ideas for various unit studies: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8259/uni...

My sons are also in Boy Scouts so we have created a lot of unit studies using the Merit Badge books (see http://www.meritbadge.com for more information - even non-scouts use these materials).

I have found that once I did a few preplanned unit studies, it was easier to create our own.

Good Luck!