How to Homeschool a Unique Learner


9 easy steps to get you started

Step 1:  Know Your Homeschool Law

Understanding your specific homeschooling law is an important first step in starting your homeschooling journey. In the United States, each state sets their own educational laws. 

If you live outside the United States, we recommend checking your national as well as local homeschooling laws.

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Step 2:  Join a Homeschool Organization

Backup is especially important for homeschooling families who work with therapists, doctors, and other professionals who may not agree with your ed choice to homeschool.

Homeschool organizations protect your rights and allow you to homeschool with greater confidence and freedom.

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Step 3:  Make Paperwork Considerations

Tracking your progress is especially important when homeschooling involves individualized goals, testing records, therapeutic interventions or behavioral & social components.

Recorded progress will build homeschooling confidence in both you and your child.

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Step 4: Find Your Curriculum

Curriculum is important when establishing scope and sequence for instruction. But, children with unique learning needs often require modifications and accommodations in using these materials to achieve their learning goals.

Programs offering multi-faceted, hands-on, and/or sensory dimensions allow parents the greatest flexibility in adapting instruction to meet their child’s specific needs.

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Step 5: Know Therapy Options

Homeschoolers have a variety of therapy options they can utilize based on their location, child’s therapy needs, and desired level of parent involvement.

These options range from federal or state-funded programs, private insurance offerings, parent-provided services, or educational consulting assistance. Even families outside the United States can use most of these services.

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Step 6: Find Your Tribe

Connecting with fellow, in-the-trenches, homeschooling families is essential to keeping your perspective and gaining the ongoing support you need to continue homeschooling. There are many ways to make these connections, but knowing you are not alone is important to staying strong in your commitment.

Prioritize finding support through the ups and downs of your homeschooling journey.

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Step 7:  Reprogram Your Educational Philosophy

Families transitioning from a traditional schoolroom-based learning model to a lifestyle of learning model often take weeks to months to learn how to learn differently.

During this transition time, families take field trips, play educational games, read books, and do other learning-related activities to explore how best their family learns together.

Step 8:  Maintain Your Student’s Individuality

It’s important to not base your child’s progress on a norm, but rather on incremental change over time.  All children transition between stagnant growth plateaus and large learning leaps.

Optimal learning happens when you pace your instruction to match these learning fluctuations and evaluate progress regularly.

Step 9:  Create a Homeschool Mission Statement

Once you are in the homeschooling trenches, it’s easy to get off course especially when your child starts to struggling, sickness creeps in, or life, in general, throws you a curve-ball.

Developing a mission statement for your homeschool will help guard against getting off track and remind you why you choose to start homeschooling.  

Watch the video

How to Start Homeschooling

The Essentials for Homeschooling a Student with Special Educational Needs

Are you thinking of homeschooling, but don’t know where to start? Peggy Ployhar, the Founder and CEO of SPED Homeschool covers what it takes to get started homeschooling, how to avoid and conquer common pitfalls, and how to homeschool special education through high school. This talk is filled with practical advice from her experience in the trenches of homeschooling for 18 years and in working for over 15 years as a special needs homeschooling consultant.