Teaching Children With Dyslexia
Homeschool Help

Teaching children with dyslexia can sound daunting, especially if you are homeschooling. These tips and suggestions from the largest group of homeschooling families ever collected together in one book will help you find the method that works best for your child and give you the reassurance that you will succeed.

4,000 homeschooling families share teaching ideas and prove that homeschooling has so many advantages when it comes to teaching children with dyslexia.

Trying to hit the same grade level as everyone else in the class when it is well known that children with dyslexia need more time, support and encouragement can lead to a deep sense of failure. Homeschooling gives you the opportunity to tailor your teaching to the way your child learns best.

By showing you what works - and what doesn't - homeschool families come together to share ideas so you can help your child succeed.

N.B. The third Courageous Homeschooling Handbook is not solely about dyslexia. It covers how to teach reading, writing and math as well as help with challenges like autism and anxiety. More info. here.

Please note that the book links on this page are affiliate links so if you buy I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Best Free Websites For Teaching Children With Dyslexia

You will find lots of suggestions for teaching children with dyslexia in The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook, but because links change and new resources appear all the time, this is the the best place to put links to the free websites homeschooling families recommend.

If you're not sure whether your child has dyslexia or not, you can find out the sign and symptoms here.

OpenDyslexic is a new open source font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. The typeface includes regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles. It is being updated continually and improved based on input from dyslexic users. OpenDyslexic is free.

You can also use a bionic reading text converter. The first few letters are bolded, making it easier for readers to glide through text and stay focused.

Learning Ally is a national non-profit dedicated to teaching children with dyslexia.  They help children succeed in school, feel more confident, and stay on a positive path for years to come.

Their vision is for all people to have equal opportunities to learn.

If you have an official diagnosis (a simple diagnosis sheet filled out by the doctor and mailed in) you can use learningally.org for free.

Hoopla is a great site for free fun audio books.  Audiobooks are a great help when it comes to teaching children with dyslexia, as Suzanne and Allie explain:

We love the free Khan academy for all homeschooling and as Allie explains it's a big help for teaching children with dyslexia too:

Free Dyslexia Help App

Monica recommends this free app.

Help For Teaching Children With Dyslexia

“Too many children are swallowed up or not picked up on in 'the system.'  We used wet-dry-try which worked enormously.  On the first day of homeschool we did handwriting practice in the sand on the beach.  I would try and make any writing at all fun, use nice colored paper, gel pens, felt tips, use a computer or tablet, write to penpals, create a blog...”

~ Sheila

“An option could be finding an online curriculum where someone else can help, and he'd be learning at home still.

Also, there are so many different kinds of curriculums. The best is to piggy-back off of what your child is "into" at the moment.  There are video game curriculums and Apps for devices, as well as written curriculums that focus around your child's interests, like art or game design...

Rainbow Resource has SO many different ideas and things, as well! You don't even have to order from them, you can just look through their catalog and get all sorts of inspiration.”

~ Jami

“We  did a lot of big letter writing on big sheets, in the sand, with chalks outside... She generally still prefers 'writing for real' rather than 'writing for practice' which she hardly does. When I did my teacher training we did a whole module on coming up with activities that were 'for real' rather than 'for practice' because it is so much more motivating.

So I would think about such scenarios like pen friends, letters/cards to family members, recipe books, stories for little friends, writing for getting badges from different places like TV shows, etc.... My daughter has a few pen friends now and writes to them regularly. She is a sight reader so she sometimes finds it hard to work out the spelling of a word from the sounds.

Using Scribblenauts (an app where you have to type in objects to help the avatar overcome obstacles) has helped a lot with her spelling. She now also uses google spelling a lot on her mobile and had a phase were she tried out different speech to text apps. Sometimes just for making up 'nonsense' stories but sometimes to record her short stories where she could concentrate on the content without having to worry about the writing or spelling. She also likes texting people because of the inbuilt spell checker."

Homeschooling Children With Dylexia

If you would like more ideas for teaching children with dyslexia, have a look in The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook.

N.B. The third Courageous Homeschooling Handbook is not solely about dyslexia. It covers how to teach reading, writing and math as well as help with challenges like autism and anxiety. More info. here.

Please note that the book links on this page are affiliate links so if you buy I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

You will see what a difference homeschool teaching has made to so many children with dyslexia.

"I have two children who are dyslexic...(and) as for homeschooling, I can honestly say it's been the best thing I've ever done for me and my family.

To anyone who is considering making this move - don't consider yourself a 'teacher.' I'm just a mom who loves learning with her kids. I taught them to walk and talk and I can teach them anything."

~ Claire, The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help

Love this page? Help me spread the word by sharing...

---

Homeschooling > Dyslexia > Teaching

---