Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, but each state has different regulations governing homeschoolers. NYS, where we live, is one of the stricter states. 

We file an annual IHIP or Individualized Home Instruction Plan.
We file quarterly progress reports throughout the year.
We turn in an end of year assessment. 

The annual assessment from grades 4-8 must be an approved test at least biannually. And in high school the annual assessment must always be a test.

This puts some pressure on folks to keep their kids in a more average learning pattern and can be stressful for people who don't believe in catering to the average but rather to the individual child. 

But I believe that you can easily cater to your child AND meet NYS guidelines - even excel at them. 

When Helena was in 3rd grade we did the California Achievement Test, or CAT test, just out of curiosity to see what it was like. She scored far ahead of grade level in all ELA - English Language Arts - areas, and scored on average for math. On both she scored far above the level needed to "pass" which is only the 33rd percentile.

So how do you expose your child to ELA without doing worksheets, curriculum, and tests and so on? 

I read to her a LOT. I try to read quality literature with well constructed sentences and above level vocabulary. I point out if the grammar is incorrect. 

We do MadLibs together. Great way to learn basic parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, plural nouns, adverbs.... 

We read funny library books on grammar and punctuation such as Greedy Apostrophe. Honestly, there are so many funny and free library books that appeal to kids that I don't see why anyone would prefer what to us is dry, boring curriculum! 

We talk about grammar in real life "Well actually you'd say, 'He is coming with Sarah and me' not 'He is coming with Sarah and I' because you'd say 'He is coming with me' not say 'He is coming with I.' If you just take out the other person then you know the correct pronoun to use."

We find math everywhere. Or at least I try REALLY hard to. Since math is not my strong suit this is trickier!

But we weigh the produce and bulk items together and estimate cost based on the per pound price.

We play math games in the car where we spot 2 numbers and then either add or subtract them mentally. We do things together until she begs to do it herself. It's a game. Not forced.

We add up items on the grocery receipt and figure out the mean, median, and mode and talk about what these statistics mean to our shopping habits. 

We get out funny library books on math topics for me to read to her.

There are so many ways to learn if you are curious and keep it casual and game-like rather than forced!! We also read Life of Fred and watch Math Antics online. Helena has chosen these. I don't do forced learning, preferring child-led learning. ((See other blog posts on that if curious)). But she knows she needs to learn fractions, for example, for the NYS testing, and she doesn't want to be way behind her peers - even though she is able to explore many subjects and topics that they don't get to learn in school.

Truthfully, you only have to score above the 33rd percentile on the annual NYS assessment. That's super low! That means that you scored higher than 33% of other kids - or that 77% of kids scored higher than you. We easily scored much, much higher than this without any formal curriculum or forced learning. Why? Because children not forced to learn LOVE to learn. Helena is curious about everything. It's like kids don't outgrow the two year old "why" stage or their wonder at the world around them! 

So if your child has dyslexia, don't despair, and don't feel you need for torture both yourself and the kiddo in order to meet requirements or keep up with standards or not raise a child who will only work at McD's. Find their strengths and cater to them. And then.... gently... patiently.... help them to strengthen their weak reading. That way only the reading itself will be "behind" and you'll still meet and exceed state standards required to keep homeschooling. 

Anyway, that's what's worked for us! What have you found helpful?

Schools push reading at a very early age because reading becomes, by about 3rd grade, the primary means or tool of learning. For each subject students read directions and write the answers. They read textbooks, write the short answers or paragraphs; read the tests, write the answers. You see the trend here?


Reading and writing are one way of learning. 

Reading and writing are the primary method of learning in public schools.

Reading and writing are not the only way of learning.

Reading and writing aren't even the best way of learning. 

In fact, psychoeducational research shows that children learn best when multiple senses are engaged, when learning is immersed in "real life" and hand's on activities. 

So how does learning occur when reading/writing aren't the primary tool? 

I read to Helena. We listen to audio books in the car.

We discuss things. I don't really "quiz" her! There's a big difference between quizzing someone and having a totally natural, deep, casual discussion of a subject much like you'd have with another interesting adult. When you quiz a kid they're looking for the correct answer to please authority and get the quizzing task over with (unless they really like quizzes). When you discuss casually, they are engaged, formulating arguments and opinions, learning critical thinking skills, and learning how to effectively communicate their view points. And it's fun! 

We live life together! See other post on unschooling/homeschooling to see all of the "subjects" covered through daily life lived in an adventurous and curious way.

I strew her path with many different learning opportunities, allow her to experiment, and encourage her passions. 

We go on "field trips" to historical museums, science museums, art museums, historical sites, oceans, forests, wetlands, mountains, and so on.... We explore. We're curious. We discover. I don't give "assignments" and we just enjoy and discuss (see above on discussing vs quizzing). 

We learn through audio/visual means. I mentioned audio books above. Recently we listened to the classic novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond. We learned so much about Puritan times and culture, so much more than we'd learn in a textbook. We discussed what it would be like to live in such a strict culture! We also learn through video such as documentaries - Wild China, which is on Netflix, was fun when her dad took a trip to China - and funny instructional videos such as Math Antics. We learn through video games such as DragonBox which teaches all of the basics of solving equations though a game where you have to isolate the dragon box. We learn though shows such as Magic Schoolbus. Sometimes these shows stimulate more questions and we get out some simple library books or do experiments or something. 

In short, there are so many different ways to learn where reading/writing are not the primary tools. I'm a big believer in making my kid feel successful and catering to her strengths, while also slowly working on the weakness that reading has been. But I'd rather crawl with the reading then end up with a child who can read on level - but will never again crack a book for the rest of her life unless forced to. 

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,I often see people asking about reading and dyslexia, and I spend way too much time reiterating the same things on multiple FB homeschool pages. So here are my thoughts and what's worked for us! 

Helena showed all of the signs of reading readiness at age four. She knew her letters simply from an alphabet puzzle I left out in the living room. She had somehow learned what sound they each made, though we never formally went through each one. I'm really not sure how she learned that. And she was continually rhyming things, a sure sign of reading readiness according to many lists. So I showed her how to sound out simple three letter words. 

Fast forward a few years and the reading had not progressed much at all. Sounding out words was still incredibly tedious. For the longest time I had no idea what was going on. Why couldn't she recognize the two vowels in the middle of a word even though, if I pointed them out, she knew the appropriate phonics rule and could use it? Why would she not see the silent "e" at the end indicating the long vowel sound in the middle; although, once again, if I pointed it out she knew the rule to go with it? I began to suspect around 2nd grade that there was some dyslexia. She hadn't outgrown confusing similar symbols such as "p" and "9" and "b" and "d" and so on. 

I researched and found Orton Gillingham was rated the best teaching method for children with dyslexia and purchased some expensive software. But it was totally ineffective for us and only led to further frustration as time went on. Again, Helena knew the phonics rules. But she just didn't see them. Reading was frustrating. I backed off making her read and just read to her daily - a LOT - something I had already been doing since she was a small infant. I tried to trust that she'd learn when she was ready. It was a bit scary to trust that process. 

Somehow or other, around 3rd grade I heard of Davis and his book The Gift of Dyslexia. Davis himself has dyslexia, and while he has no PhD in education or psych, he found what worked for himself and taught it successfully to many others. Furthermore, his experiences lined up with what I knew about dyslexic brains from neuropsych research. 

Dyslexia is a broad term that covers many different reading difficulties. For some children it's simply a matter of their brains needing a very left-brained method of reading, in which case the OG phonics method works wonders. For other kids though, it's a case of their brains being able to flip things all around 360 degrees - which is really pretty amazing and exciting and useful - until it comes to symbols. 

One neuropsych article I read explained that neural columns are spaced more widely apart than is typical in many folks with dyslexia. Because of this they are more easily able to make broad connections between subjects and ideas. In contrast, a child on the autism spectrum tends to have more narrowly spaced neural columns which is why they may fixate on things, have difficulties making transitions, and become experts who go deeply in a subject area.

For the child with dyslexia, they begin making metaphorical analogies before school age - at a very early stage in development. And it turns out that with many kids with dyslexia they don't "see' only what's in front of them. Their brains have the ability to rotate an object around 360 degrees, in every direction, in order to find out more information about it. Those widely spaced neural connections allow them to make broad connections between what they already know - and what they are seeing. So what they "see" becomes a combination of what's right in front of them and knowledge they already have. Because of this, they often seem like bright, developmentally advanced toddlers and preschoolers. So it comes as even more of a surprise when they struggle with reading. 

Needless to say, this ability of the brain to flip things around every which way is super useful in understanding the world around them - until they come to symbols which obviously can't be interpreted correctly when flipped around. But by this point in time, the flipping process is completely subconscious. Furthermore, it's stimulated to begin when the child is presented with anything the least bit confusing, anything they need to figure out. Can you see where the reading problems arise?

When I read all of this in Davis book I was in awe! Now I finally understood why Helena could read a few sentences well, hit a difficult word, and then literally be unable to read a three letter word such as "and" when it came next. Her brain was kicked into the "flipping things around" mode by the difficult word! Furthermore, some of the words she "read" were more like a word scramble. I'd find myself asking how in the world she got such a word out of those letters - and then I'd see that if you "unscrambled" the letters you really could almost get that word! I was amazed at what her brain was doing! 

I read Davis book and then asked Helena a few casual questions such as "So hey, when you look at something do you see like a flat picture or does the object turn around so you can see what's behind it too?" She was really surprised to realize that not everyone's brains flip things around because that was totally normal for her! 

Just a few minutes practicing with Davis' methods of brnging awareness to this subconscious process and learning how to put the "mind's eye" back in the position and order needed for reading or decoding symbols, and suddenly reading became a lot easier for Helena! 

At this point, she was in 3rd grade and I was reading her books on a regular basis that were far higher than 3rd grade level. So the challenge became finding things she could read that were not Dick and Jane boring. 

We found graphic novels with their small bit of text on the page were great. In particular Bad Kitty was awesome - absolutely hilarious! Bean Dog and Nugget were super easy to read and so ridiculously humorous even to me! Mercy Watson was also tolerable to her. From those we proceeded on to more complex graphic novels and short chapter books. I will admit we've bought a lot of books, mostly for pennies in the thrift store thankfully, that she thought she'd like and then hated. I won't force her to read something she hates. It's just not worth it. I'm a reader and, though she may never read prolifically like me and finds other ways of learning, the fact is that I really, REALLY don't want to create a person who hates to read!! 

Now, at age 10, she reads on grade level, albeit still very slowly and sometimes sounding things out a bit more than average. She doesn't read a lot. As unschoolers I don't generally force things, believing that learning occurs naturally in many different ways. But I do - and this would get me kicked out of some unschooling circles - require now that she read just a little bit daily. It's an important skill and I believe a bit of practice is good and helpful. But she might only read five pages and that's ok! 

While reading and writing are important, they are no longer the only way to learn or the primary means of communication. Dyslexia part 2 and 3 will talk about other ways to learn as well as how to keep up with NYS testing for homeschoolers when a child has dyslexia. 

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