Soul Survivor: The Bethany Hamilton Story

Biography, Just For Fun, Special Needs

By Mary Pride
Printed in Practical Homeschooling #83, 2008.

A shocking loss led to life-changing opportunities for this homeschooled surfer girl.

On October 31, 2003, like many of you I was reading the news online when a headline caught my eye. A young girl, surfing off the coast off Hawaii, had lost her left arm in a shark attack. Thinking how I would feel if this happened to one of my daughters, I stopped to pray for her.

Fast forward four and a half years. A PR agent mails me a copy of theconGRADulations! Class of 2008 grad gift. It features some soft-spoken comments and surfing footage of . . . that very same girl, Bethany Hamilton, who it seems is now a surfing champion.

What’s more, I discover Bethany is being homeschooled. (more…)

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15 YEAR OLD BECOMES THE YOUNGEST ASTROPHYSICIST IN THE WORLD

Burn Out, Informative, Just For Fun, Special Needs

Taken from http://www.beautyexists.net/news/15-year-old-becomes-the-youngest-astrophysicist-in-the-world/

Jacob-Barnett-1895223

Doctors said that Jacob Barnett would never be able to tie his own shoes, but at the age of 15…Barnett has become the youngest astrophysicist in the world.

At the age of 2, Jacob was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism and doctors said he would never be able to read or write.  But his mom Kristine Barnett, refused to listen to their words. Instead, she set out to help him transform his life. The key, according to mom Kristine,was letting Jacob be himself — by helping him study the world with wide-eyed wonder instead of focusing on a list of things he couldn’t do.

After his diagnosis, Jacob was visited frequently by a number of psychologists under an Indiana program called First Steps, which included a developmental therapist, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist, among others.

Jacob spent years in the clutches of a special education system that didn’t understand what he needed. His teachers at school would try to dissuade Kristine from hoping to teach Jacob any more than the most basic skills. But Kristine started to notice that when he was not in therapy, Jacob was doing “spectacular things” on his own. For example, she told the BBC: (more…)

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Tips for Homeschooling a Child with Dyslexia

Classroom Help, Special Needs

Taken from http://www.hsclassroom.net/tips-for-homeschooling-a-child-with-dyslexia/

Tips for homeschooling a child with dyslexia

The following is a post from contributing writer, Kris Bales of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

This post contains affiliate links.

Homeschooling a child with dyslexia can be challenging – for you and for them. I don’t mean “challenging” in a way that suggests it’s a horrible thing because dyslexic kids have many amazing strengths. It can be challenging, though, in letting go of your vision of what school “should” look like and providing a learning-rich environment for a kid who doesn’t learn in typical ways.

The tips I’ll be sharing are from the perspective of a mom teaching dyslexic high school and middle school students, so some of them may work better for older-elementary students and up.

As he was finishing the Lexercise online dyslexia therapy program and we were preparing to embark on “life after therapy,” my son’s dyslexia tutor told me that, as a homeschooling mom, I was in the unique position to give my son exactly what he needed most – one-on-one teaching.

Some of the tips I’ll share with you are things she suggested, going forward, and some are things I’d been doing naturally anyway. (more…)

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