Free Curriculum for Homeschooling to Overcome Learning Disabilities
Do you need Free Curriculum for homeschooling a child with learning disabilities?
I’ve listed several high-quality, free curriculum and online learning programs. These programs can be used as free homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities. They’re ideal for kids with ADHD, dyslexia, or dysgraphia because they’re interactive and have an audio component. This accommodates for weak reading skills.
I have several categories of free curriculum programs listed. Therefore, scrolling down all the way to the bottom will give you the most choices. Scrolling to the bottom is most important if you’re looking for a specific type of curriculum for your child.
The programs I’ve listed below are suited for Homeschool Curriculum for Learning Disabilities for the content portion of your child’s schooling. By that, I mean you can use these programs for science, social studies, and reading and math practice.
Learning Preferences
Children with ADHD often like the engagement of such programs for a portion of their learning even though they prefer kinesthetic learning activities or activities for tactile learners. Using noise cancelling headphones helps kids with ADHD focus on the lessons. This is explained on the Noise Cancelling Headphones Assistive Technology page.
These programs provide audio-visual learning, and include tactile movements suited for learning reinforcement in children with a kinesthetic learning style. They aren’t complete remedial programs though. You’ll probably still need specialized programs for teaching remedial skills for dyslexia, dyscalculia, or dysgraphia.
The audio-visual nature of the free curriculum programs will help your child with ADHD or Dyslexia learn, so they make good Homeschool Curriculum for Learning Disabilities. Since these options for Free Homeschool Curriculum for Learning Disabilities have audio, your child doesn’t have to be able to read well. With the visual component, the programs are great for teaching visual and hands-on learners too.
As homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities, these programs are all great to use for the content portion of your homeschool curricula. See what you find below that may meet your needs. If you need more options, check out “Home School Curriculum for Learning Disabilities” for additional curriculum providers.
Free Online Homeschool Curriculum for Learning Disabilities Engagement
Discovery K12 Education
Provides K-12 online, interactive, educational games and simulations in one place. “Discovery K12 also known as DK12 is a direct to consumer education company. The company provides a free online homeschool platform and curriculum for pre-k to twelfth grade. An upgraded Parent/Teacher Account is available for student reporting and tracking. 7 standard courses: Language Arts, Reading/Literature, Math, Science, History/Social Studies, Visual/Performing Arts, and Physical Education.
Student Accounts are free and include all of the free curriculum.” – The K-12 interactive, educational games and simulations within Discovery K12 Education are of high quality and likely to be engaging for any student. It may take a bit of planning and organization of the lessons for you to use this as a free homeschool curriculum. However, there are so many lessons that you can cover a lot of content.
ABCya
This site has lessons created by teachers, based upon lessons they teach in their classrooms. The website contains math and language arts concepts for grades K-5. The only thingI don’t care for in this site is that the “grade level” is very prominent in the design. The grade displays can be an issue for a child who is in 4th or 5th grade and needs 1st or 2nd grade content.
Kids are somewhat likely to balk at working at a lower grade level. If the lessons were based upon a progression of skills, regardless of grade level, then it would be easier for parents to get older children to use the site. Overall the site has great content that you can use as free homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities, and you can upgrade to the premium content, if you’d like. You may want to give it a try if you’re looking for something that engages your child.
WatchKnowLearn.org
For K-12, WatchKnowLearn.org is an awesome place to start! This is my top choice for free homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities for elementary-aged kids. You begin by putting in your child’s age, then the topic you want. For example, if you type in “Fractions” for age 12, you can watch the Introduction to Fractions Song, Mr. Duey – Fractions Rap, Basic Math: Lesson 6 – Video Clip #3 – Equivalent Fractions or choose from a wide variety of other lessons on the topic.
This resource can be extremely helpful if you need to find an audio-visual means of teaching your child any specific concept. Some of the videos will be helpful for kinethetic/tactile learners if they get up and move along with the videos. As with earlier options, you’ll have to put in some planning and organization effort to make the Watch Know Learn free curriculum serve as a homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities, but this site is well worth your organizational time.
Khan Academy
The Khan Academy, funded by Salman Khan, is similar to WatchKnowLearn, but it’ geared more towards high school, college, and adult level studies. If you have an advanced learner, the Khan Academy is a great, free resource for audio-visual learning. It’s awesome as an option for free homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities.
Also at the high school-college level, there are great courses available through Coursera.org. These courses are offered by a consortium of universities, so they are best suited for advanced learners. The courses run in specified timeframes for a varied number of weeks, but the descriptions say the courses are “at your own pace.” This would be a good option for advanced, 2E students who are able to finish within the specified timeframe, and want to focus on just a couple of courses at a time. This isn’t an option that will work for everyone, but I thought I’d mention it because it is a great free homeschool curriculum for learning disabilities option for 2E kids.
AcademicEarth.org and edX.org
Both AcademicEarth.org and edX.org offer free online courses from some of the top universities in the world. The courses are free, online, include teaching videos and interactive exercises. Learning is at your own pace, but requires you to carefully consider whether your child is prepared to study at the high level of teaching in these videos. These courses are ideal for gifted learners who want to independently advance their learning.
Specialty Sites for Free Curriculum for Learning Disabilities like ADHD and Dyslexia:
I recommend having your child use headphones for clearer understanding of the audio component in each of the audio-visual programs.
Free Online Homeschool Curriculum for Learning Disabilities in Reading – Dyslexia or ADHD
NOTE: These are not specifically reading remediation programs. If your child has dyslexia, or difficulty with reading, using an Orton-Gillingham reading program is highly recommended. The programs below are not comprehensive solutions for reading difficulties, but they are great reinforcement tools to use with any Orton-Gillingham reading program.
PBSKids’ Reading Games – Basic reading skills with All KINDS of games, but they aren’t organized in any particular format. It’s a great place to visit and play around.
The Free Phonics Program has over 400 free phonics activities to help build a solid foundation for early readers. “It offers a complete and comprehensive free phonics curriculum, unlike other free phonics programs that only cover fragmented parts of the phonics curriculum. The Free Phonics Program features over 400 interactive activities spanning auditory, visual, and tactile learning styles. From mastering the alphabet to reading full sentences, our free curriculum is organized to build skills systematically and sequentially. And yes, it’s entirely free – offering a depth and breadth of learning experiences that are unparalleled by other free resources.”
Progressive Phonics is “an all-in-one reading program that is easy, fun, and totally FREE—that’s right, totally and completely free! And with Progressive Phonics, ANYONE can teach a child to read and write in just a few minutes a day,” which makes it ideal for parents and home-schoolers.
Blake Education’s Phonics.com makes “reading fun and easy for parents, educators and children everywhere. Learning to read is an important lifelong skill, and at Blake Education we believe that high-quality resources are essential to building a solid learning foundation. This is why we have supplied the first lessons of our Phonics reading program absolutely free — to give early readers a head start in learning.”
Free Curriculum for Online Homeschool Learning Disabilities in Math for ADHD or Dyslexia
Educational Games – Great site with the ability to select grade level and subject. Easy site to use.
Math Play – A dynamic learning environment that motivates students to learn while they play. Has games for every grade level.
PBSKids’ Numbers Games – For basic math number skills; All KINDS of games, but they aren’t organized in any particular format. It’s a great place to visit and play around.
Purple Math – for help with Algebra
MathTV – high school level math teaching videos
Free Online Homeschool Curriculum for Learning Disabilities in Spelling due to ADHD or Dyslexia
If your child has dyslexia, or difficulty with spelling, using an Orton-Gillingham spelling program is highly recommended. The programs below are not comprehensive solutions for spelling difficulties, but they are great for repetitive practice, which is often necessary. If your child is having pervasive spelling difficulties, check out what works for spelling.
Homespellingwords.com – “Home Spelling Words provides an interesting mix of verbal and visual teaching that will help your child improve his or her spelling test scores. This program is fun and free.”
Sight Words: Pre-k to 3rd Grade App – An exciting learning game that helps children learn to recognize and read words by sight, sound, and touch.
Sight Words Coach – NOT free, but very inexpensive, this is a great app for teaching high frequency sight words (from the Dolch Sight Word list). “This fun game covers all five levels of Dolch Sight Words. It makes the most of the study time by remembering which words are more challenging to your child and asking them more often. They number only about 200, but make up approximately 50 to 70 percent of any general, non-technical text. Therefore, fast recognition of Sight Words is an essential part of functional literacy.”
