A-Man has officially started homeschooling this year, and it has already been quite a journey. He needs really hands-on lessons to keep him involved and engaged in his learning, so I was on the hunt for some autism-friendly curriculum for autistic kindergarteners to help him develop a love of learning!
Autism-Friendly Curriculum for Autistic Kindergarteners
All About Reading
We decided on All About Reading for A-Man because it’s a really hands-on and sensory-friendly reading curriculum. The activities really help kids develop their reading skills at their own pace. I won’t say that A-Man doesn’t fight reading at all with this curriculum, but he cooperates a lot more than he would have!
We also really like that All About Reading covers the basics of reading thoroughly. A-Man has several splinter skills and a wicked eye for memorizing. All About Reading helps him to generalize his letters. See, A-Man might understand that a red A with an apple next to it is an A, but he may not understand that a black A with an alligator next to it is also an A.
Saxon Math (K)
I know that at A-Man’s level he doesn’t really need a “curriculum”, but it helps me feel a lot better about homeschooling to have some sort of guide. I really liked the Saxon math curriculum for kindergarten because there was no workbook! A-Man is absolutely not a workbook kid, so I knew that it would be the best fit.
Even without the workbook, though, we have to change up the curriculum quite a bit to meet A-Man where he’s at. Really, our favorite part about Saxon is all of the manipulatives that came with it! We use the bear counters to practice sorting by color and counting and the pattern blocks to practice matching designs and patterns.
Fundanoodle I Can Pound Kit
Now, don’t think that we’re going crazy with the curriculum here. We probably use the standard curriculum once or twice a week. During the rest of the week we use supplemental learning products and we do a ton of play-based learning!
One of our favorite learning products that we have, and the it’s our first choice whenever A-Man doesn’t want to do his All About Reading letter activities is the Fundanoodle I Can Pound Kit! A-Man loves to pound out the letter sheets that come included. We even have him trace the dot-to-dots, color the picture (if there is one), and then pound out the sheets. The best part? He can do this totally independently!
Fundanoodle Muscle Mover Cards
We also like to use the Muscle Mover cards to practice our letters! Right now we’re working on uppercase, but we’ll move onto lowercase soon. The muscle mover cards have a letter on one side, with a corresponding animal movement on the back. The cards are dry erase, so kids can trace the letter and then immediately take a brain break by doing the animal movement!
Beyond that, we’ve used the cards for letter recognition, and you can also build the letters with wikki stix or play doh!
So those are the basic curriculum choices that we have made for A-Man this year. We’re bouncing between preschool and kindergarten levels, and we’re incorporating a ton of his therapy activities into our days as well. Plus, of course, we’re just doing a lot of life learning. Exploring our world and reading tons of really fun books together!
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I am interested in taking my child with Aitism out of public schooling he’s not learning there. What can I do to home school him and get him started he’s 8 he vantage read he can’t spell or write. I need help. Thank u
Iam struggling with the same decision with my 5year old. Iam also looking to homeschool him and try a different way. He started st age 3 and he’s not talking either
I have a high functioning non verbal autistic 2 yr old son… need to get him started learning numbers and letters so he will b able to keep up n school… when he is old enough to go
I hope it’s gone well! You probably know this, but remember he might regress at times and/or take longer to retain information due to symptoms of autism effecting learning. We had our child (with autism) counting to 4 and learning letters by age 2 but she’s almost 6 and doesn’t really count much and doesn’t always match her letters correctly anymore. Every kid is different of course and I hope your boy is doing better than that. But just to let you know not to pressure yourselves too much if it doesn’t work out the way you plan! Best of luck.
My son turned 6 August 20. Made the decision to homeschool. He’s never been in school. He has high functioning autism, add, adhd, developmental delay and is verbal. He has melt downs, outburst when we try to teach him. Task seem hard for him. What do you recommend for him? I don’t know where to start?
I really appreciate this article! We have pegs but I didn’t think to make letters (and/or numbers) with them! We’ve only been doing shapes and patterns. A-man’s story is very relatable to my daughter who is also bouncing between pre-k and K material. Sometimes what’s even K material/curriculum in one set can be considered 1st grade in another so it’s confusing. Idk if it has to do with State guidelines and such…as so far I’m left to searching the internet for curriculum until we can get her in a charter homeschool. I think it’s the ideal environment for young mod.-severe autistics if someone that knows the child really well is available. It seems to be stressful for the teachers in public schools to keep track of the quirks of students and what sets them off, etc, even in special education classrooms. Stressful to homeschool too but it’s one-on-one usually and at least I know my child’s limits and my own so I feel good knowing she is not being warehoused or worse at school. I feel bad for parents that just don’t have the option but I am glad I do!