Planning Curriculum

Some parents who are just starting out on their homeschooling journey prefer to use a correspondence course or a packaged curriculum. This, of course, can be a bit more difficult if your child is blind or visually impaired. You might need to get the materials put into Braille or into electronic format (such as cassette or CD), or you might need to read them to your student.

If you are looking for materials in an accessible medium, you might try finding out if someone else has already done this and no longer needs their books. A couple places you might ask include the following Yahoo groups: Sight Exchange or Blindhomeschooler. The only drawback with Sight Exchange - probably only a drawback if you are just starting out - is that you need to donate something before you can receive something. The friendly folks at Blindhomeschooler can sometimes steer you in the right direction to find what you need.

You can also join Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, where they have many books in electronic format or will make those that you need. There is a fee to join, but you can then get access to lots of audible books and textbooks.

To find out more about various curriculum options, you can visit my website or you can visit the very comprehensive A to Z Home's Cool Website. (We both have a webpage specifically devoted to blindness resources as well.)

If you do decide to use a correspondence school for your child, you will want to communicate with the school beforehand about your child's needs. Only public schools are required by law to accept a child who is visually impaired, and some schools might feel it isn't something they can handle. However, you can probably make a difference in their attitude by reassuring them that you will get the work to the child in a form he can use, and get the child's work back to the school in a form that the school personnel can evaluate.

For me, it was easier to just leave the packaged curriculums behind. We pick and choose whatever materials work best for us for any given subject. I will share more about this in a coming post.