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 homeschoolers help with teaching ideas for children with dyslexia

"My daughter (age 13) has dyslexia and left school unable to read. Today, after being homeschooled for 14 months, she read 25 pages from a mid level reader 3 times in a row, because she wanted to."

~ Dawn, The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help

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.

Part 3

Paperback

Buy Now button

Part 3

Kindle

Buy Now button

Part 3

Hardcover

Buy Now button

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.

Open Dyslexic

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.

Bionic reading font

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.

“I just wanted to add, that my friends use the fonts for dyslexia and it makes a big difference.”

~ Monica, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook group

Learning Ally

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

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:

"Use audio books.  Making sure our kids love books and reading was a top priority.  Audio books helped with this (and absence of other types of media like TV and video games.)"

~ Suzanne, The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help

"(To help my son) we did audio books. Did you know that audio books use all the same areas of the brain as reading? I have proof - neuropsychologists approve of audio books for dyslexics. USE THEM - it's Okay."

~ Allie, The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help

Khan Academy

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

"Visually learn - stream YouTube's Crash Course history/science (by the Green Brothers) - It's also available free on the Khan academy.

Use Khan for learning math - you can watch the videos to learn how to do the math and you can increase the screen font size so your child can read it."

~ Allie, The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help

Free Dyslexia Help App

Lexi's world spelling app

Monica recommends this free app.

"This game is for dyslexia to learn writing and spelling and it’s free."

~ Monica, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook group

Help For Teaching Children With Dyslexia

tips

N.B. This advice for teaching children with dyslexia is taken from The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help

“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."

  • You can see many more homeschooling strategies for teaching children with dyslexia here.
  • And if you would like to read more homeschooling stories of success teaching children with dyslexia look here.

Homeschooling Children With Dylexia

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

The Courageous Homeschooling Handbook: Homeschool Help with reading, writing, math, dyslexia, anxiety and autism.

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.

Part 3

Paperback

Buy Now button

Part 3

Kindle

Buy Now button

Part 3

Hardcover

Buy Now button

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

Homeschooling gives you the opportunity to find the best methods for teaching children with dyslexia so you can give your child the best start in life.

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


Homeschooling > Dyslexia > Teaching


blue arrow
free homeschool newsletter

FREE Homeschool Newsletter

"Just had a look through your monthly newsletter focusing on math. Thanks so much for all the links and ideas. It's brilliant!" ~ Diana      

"Hi....I totally love all your posts and enjoy reading them....the kids love the activities and enjoy them through and through." ~ Bianka

18,000 Facebook Fans

Enjoy This Page? Please Share It....

Sonya Chappell

Free Newsletter

Homeschool activities monthly newsletter

Homeschool Secrets of Success

Homeschool Secrets of Success
Amazon review
Learn more

"With the education system failing so many brilliant children it's great to be able to have resources like your website for inspiration, ideas and just a sense of belonging. What you are doing for your children is priceless." ~ Natalija

"I really appreciate your time and effort that goes into your posts... It's nice to see that you are a 2nd generation homeschooler." ~ Teresa


"Your newsletters & book have helped us through our journey.  For that I can only thank you.
Please, please, please keep it up, people like you make our home school life so much easier." ~ Kelly

"I have joined paid sites that were not even one percent as great as this site. Really amazing what you are doing and so so helpful thanks so much!" ~ Eli