Homeschooling With
Vision Therapy
By Anne-Marie C. Jordan
Homeschool is an ideal environment
for successful vision training . . . .
It was a crisp November day and my husband Troy, 9-year-old son Cole, 2-year-old son Luke, and I carried our new classroom supplies into
the house. It was Thanksgiving weekend
and we had just withdrawn Cole from a
special needs school the week prior. Back
in August I had withdrawn him from the
private Christian school he had attended
for three years. We were all about to begin a new chapter in our family: we were
going to homeschool Cole.
Cole was diagnosed with dyslexia in first
grade. Despite several years of partnering
with our original private school, the public school’s speech therapists, and various
learning specialists, Cole was not learning,
and I felt called to bring him home.
Before I could educate Cole I had to
educate myself. My husband borrowed
several homeschooling books from the
library, and one of them happened to
be Homeschooling Methods by Paul and
Gena Suarez. This book gave me a great
overview of various homeschool styles,
devoted a whole chapter to special needs
learners, and introduced The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine (TOS) to a mom who
did not know such a publication existed.
Through TOS, I found Spell to Write
and Read (SWR) written by Wanda San-
seri. Immediately, as I used that curricu-
lum with Cole, I could see how my son
was improving. My son responded beau-
tifully to the systematic, multisensory
curriculum of SWR. After about a year
of home instruction, my son’s spelling,
penmanship, and written composition
had greatly improved. There was, how-
ever, one area that still needed work: he
could not read well.
