Children with special needs

[mandyky]

My son (8 YO) is autistic spectrum and in special education at school. He reads well and they are working with him on his math.
His main lack is social stuff. I want to work with him on Social Studies and Science at home. He loves the computer and dinosaurs and knows we are democrats (he cried when I told him Bush won).

Any suggestions? I will look through the homeschool links and resources threads..

[mzmolly]

1. Enchantedlearning.com

is a good site for starters.

Good luck!

Are you sure he's simply not gifted ? The "so called symptoms" look very similar for aspergers vs. giftedness interestingly enough.

:hi:

[mandyky]

2. I am hoping he is more gifted than AS

My hubby's biz partner's wife teaches piano, and he will start that soon. We'll see what happens there. I just want to do all I can to get him as "close to normal" as possible. I also want to have him be confident on his strong points, while challenging him in other areas.

[LWolf]

3. Some AS

are gifted. And you are right, the biggest area of concern is in social skills. Good luck with that!

There is no concern about AS kids being confident on their strong points, in my experience. But finding resources to allow them to explore to the depth they desire is a huge, huge challenge. ;-)

My AS student, who I've known and worked with in various formats since he was in K, (he's a 5th grader now), has devoured our local library, exhausting all the books, kid, adult, and reference, they have available on his particular subjects. That took him a few years, of course, but he remembers everything he reads after the first reading, and remembers it for years. His challenge is not to take in the information, but what to do with it. He needs help analyzing and integrating. So, while I know that is not what you were looking for, don't forget your library as a starting point!

Also, since you are going to be augmenting social studies and science at home, use all of your local museums, historical buildings/landmarks, nature centers, etc..

A quick KidsClick search for dinosaurs brought up a wealth of websites appropriate for kids:

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/searchkids.pl?searchtype=subject&keywords=dinosaurs&title=Dinosaurs

And there are some webquests here:

http://webquest.org/

You can search for your topics of interest; look in the left-hand column.

And, while you didn't say math, there are some awesome math/science projects/activities at the link below; not for kids to manage by themselves, though, they need adult participation!

http://www.c3.lanl.gov/mega-math/