Last month, I introduced language arts homeschooling lessons and focused on reading speaking, and vocabulary. Language arts is a large area to cover. It includes all of the components of written and spoken language that we use to express our thoughts and ideas, such as reading, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, handwriting, listening, and speaking.

In this second part of how to lead homeschool lessons using The Autism Helper, Language Arts Leveled Daily Curriculum, I am focusing on writing, speaking, vocabulary, and beginning sentence structure. Since many autistic learners, including all of mine, use AAC in various ways, I wanted to focus on how I incorporate that as well.

Writing

Handwriting is not the most preferred task for Ben and George, but I try different things. Ben loves his Magna Doodle for writing. He loves it so much that he now has one that he goes to bed with. He scribbles on it because it relaxes him. Magna Doodles are great because the pressure needed to write is light, which is good for beginners. George loves dry-erase boards. Pencil and paper require a lot of pressure. Dry-erase is a lot easier. If your child struggles with pencils, try putting curriculum pages in a dry- erase pouch. I take pictures and save them to an album on my phone to track progress.

Davyd is my oldest and has great handwriting skills. We have started writing smaller and staying on the line. He is also beginning to trace cursive letters. The Multi-Sensory Labeling book from Channie’s is also helping him trace pictures which is improving his drawing skills, as well as comprehension because he is drawing what he is labeling.

Other Fun Writing Activities

When I was teaching in a special education classroom with students with beginning skills, every day we practiced writing in a different way. My students weren’t ready to trace lines. Before children write, they scribble. So, I gave them lots of opportunities to use different materials to do that. One day, they would grab their favorite Melissa and Doug Water Wow from a bin, another day, I would unroll white paper and let them pick from markers, crayons, and colored pencils and scribble whatever they wanted. On another day, they would each have a Magna Doodle to scribble on. They also had dry-erase boards one day and LCD tablets another. They were having fun, but they were also building hand strength. Every day we would practice pre-writing lines, with the level of assistance they needed.

Conclusion

Language arts is such an important subject and it can be fun too. As with all learning, the more fun we make it for our children, the more they will want to learn.