Why Art Is Essential in Learning

In this enriching episode of Empowering Homeschool Conversations, four of our five dedicated hosts, experienced special education homeschooling moms, come together for a power-packed discussion on a pertinent seasonal topic: Smooth Transitions: Easing Special Needs Kids Back into Homeschool Routines This episode is packed with practical advice, personal anecdotes, and lots of helpful insights aimed at getting your homeschooling schedule under control before it controls you. Join us as we share advice, give you our personal tips, and overall provide a comforting reminder that you are not alone on this journey. Viewers like you funded similar episodes, and other free resources from SPED Homeschool. To learn how you can support the nonprofit work of SPED Homeschool and this broadcast, visit https://spedhomeschool.com/donate/ To find out more about SPED Homeschool, visit our website at https://spedhomeschool.com/ To learn about the other Empowering Homeschool Conversations Co-Hosts and their resources, visit: https://annieyorty.com/ https://www.leilanimelendez.com/ https://elarplearning.com/ https://solimaracademy.com/ Join our mission to empower homeschool families!: https://spedhomeschool.com/donate/ Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

By Dianne Craft, MA, CNHP Question: "I am a homeschooling mother of four, ages 7-12. I'm at a loss as to how to homeschool my son, Nathan, who is 12 years old. He's behind in everything. It takes him all day to do his work. He freezes when he looks at his math papers, and it takes him forever to write anything. I know he's smart, but he says he's 'dumb.' I want him to be an independent learner, but I don't know how to get him there." Answer: It sounds like Nathan has hit a wall with his schoolwork and is on the verge of giving up. This response is common when children don’t have the strategies they need to move past the "stuck" phase. I encountered similar challenges when teaching in my 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade Resource Room, which I referred to as my "Intensive Care Unit." Like Nathan, many of my students had lost their motivation to learn despite having supportive parents, teachers, and putting in their best effort. To help them, I knew I needed to use a different approach—what I call "Healing Teaching." What is Healing Teaching? Healing Teaching is a method where the teacher actively partners with a child to provide them with learning strategies, essentially teaching them how to use their brain effectively. The focus is on setting up each lesson to guarantee immediate success, taking small, manageable steps toward mastery. There’s no concept of "falling behind" because the work is done together within a set timeframe, with the goal of learning the material—not necessarily completing all problems or worksheets. The grade-level content remains unchanged, but the teaching approach is entirely transformed. By guiding children gently toward correct answers and ignoring wrong ones, they start to relax, enjoy learning, and build confidence in their abilities. This method helped my students recover from what I saw as a "learning flu," and it’s a process that can easily be implemented at home, even with other siblings to teach. Examples of Healing Teaching Methods Leading to Correct Answers: In my Remedial Reading class, students were initially resistant to reading aloud or participating in phonics programs. To address this, I removed non-essential decoding tasks like writing or memorizing rules. Instead, I wrote long words on an overhead projector, highlighting the "decoding unit" in color and adding a picture that represented the sound. If a student mispronounced a word but used the decoding unit correctly, I would affirm their effort and focus on tackling the tricky part together. This method boosted their confidence, and by the end of the year, my students were reading two years ahead of their grade level! Jazzy Spelling: Spelling can be difficult, so I taught students to use their photographic memory. We would take a long word, like "psychology," and make the letters visually memorable with colors, funny meanings, or even adding some drama like "blood" on the letters. After just one session, students could spell the words forwards and backwards, building their confidence in spelling. Paragraph Blobs: Writing paragraphs was a challenge for my students, so we tackled it together without workbooks or worksheets. We would brainstorm a topic, draw "blobs" to organize ideas, add one-word reminders of sentences, and then connect these ideas using a Right Brain Webbing method. This made writing easier, and students found that the paper practically wrote itself. Careful Correcting: After writing, we corrected papers together using an overhead projector. Initially, students were nervous, but I turned the process into a positive experience by giving points for every correct aspect—like starting with a capital letter or using adjectives. We focused on the good, and I made mental notes of spelling mistakes to address later, without pointing them out immediately. This approach encouraged students to write more and longer paragraphs, feeling smarter with each attempt. Real-Life Success Stories Nathan's Success: Nathan’s mom shared that switching to doing math on a whiteboard (without videos or workbooks) and modeling the problems for him made a huge difference. She even created a "template" to hang on the wall, and Nathan smiled all day. He was getting things right without the pressure of checking off a workbook, and his mom was overjoyed. Grace's Success: Grace, a 15-year-old, had so much anxiety about schoolwork that her parents had to stop schooling her temporarily due to the frustration. When they switched to Healing Teaching methods, Grace started enjoying all her subjects and returned to learning with enthusiasm. Emma's Success: Emma's mother contacted me because her 12-year-old daughter was often in tears during the school day, frustrated with re-doing workbooks and struggling with math. We suggested a plan that incorporated Healing Teaching methods into Emma’s routine. Soon after, Emma began enjoying school, writing paragraphs, and even mastering math with the help of a creative "template" on the wall. Long-Term Success The Healing Teaching method doesn’t have to be used forever—typically, it’s needed for less than a year. After that, students can transition back to regular learning without the fear of getting "stuck." This approach can lead to a success-driven school year and help children rediscover their love for learning. To explore more of Dianne’s resources, visit diannecraft.org.