Homeschooling Kindergarten DS Our Story

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Hello,

I am new here. I have a 6 y/o ds who I am about to wrap up first year of

homeschooling. He was dx'ed with receptive-expressive language d/o at age 3 and

attended the public school's special needs preschool for 2 years. He took and

IQ test last year and bombed it. A few weeks prior to the testing his teacher

there of 2 years told us he would do " fine " with cognitive testing and she told

us he has " strong academic " skills.

At that time, he recognized all letters of the alphabet, knew letter sounds,

could rote count to 30 and recognized numerals to at least 30. He was succesful

at learning many high frequency words. He could button and zip. He knew his

personal information name, phone# birthday etc. He understood the concept of

opposites and seasons. He could print his first name. He had most of the

schools that are considered necessary to be ready for K. The exception to this

was his language skills were poor, he had a hard time following directions

without prompting and was very passive and shy yet well-behaved and polite.

We made a video of ds performing various skills including sight reading and

making sentences with the words read, doing an alphabet puzzle, identifying the

letters and sound and the other skills mentioned above. We presented it to the

school district. They never commented on it. They told us to pursue private

testing if we disagreed with thier testing. We knew my son wasn't going to get

an accurate test of his abilities because of his language processing problems.

So we decided to homeschool him.

We also met with a Catholic school who viewed the tape and felt that he was

" bright and really learning " but viewed him in the classroom and felt something

was wrong due to him needing so much prompting. She stated that she believed

that he may have auditory processing difficulties and referred us to an

audiologist. She told us that it was very possible that he would be a candidate

for her school in a couple of years. Based on some of the kids that she had

worked with this issue.

So, I am happy to report that homeschooling Kindergarten has gone very well. DS

has started to read,and learning phonics. He is printing letters of the

alphabet, counting to 100, doing simple math problems using manipulatives like

pegs. He has learned to ice skate, catch a baaseball with a glove, hit a

pitched ball. He starts baseball next week. I know that he wouldn't have done

so well without the homeschooling because of his language problem.

I still stress out about how things will progress for him in terms of academics

and development in general. I am also happy about our sucess.

I also homeschool my dd 4 y/o in Kindergarten to and she keeps up just as well.

We belong to a homeschool group and participate in activities and field trips

with them. We are excited to start 1st grade next year.