Look at Blossom & Root and Torchlight materials as well. Also Core Knowledge.

I'm a little late to this thread but thought I'd chime in. I had my dh start a D&D group for my sons and their friends, and it has run 2x/month for over a year now. It truly helps with social skills across the board. I also encouraged my oldest ds to start a D&D group last September with his friends and he has learned quite a bit this year in the process of organizing and scheduling sessions, running games, and maintaining friendships. I can't recommend it enough. The other main thing I've used to improve EQ is Collaborative & Proactive Solutions. The creator, Dr. Ross Greene, has a few books out. I'd particularly recommend Raising Human Beings. This process has dramatically boosted both sons' ability to identify their emotions, articulate their thoughts, empathize with other perspectives, and negotiate for what they want without anger. It's been a huge win for us.

How To and What If by Randall Munrow have been exceptionally popular read-alouds at our house. I would also recommend mining Guest Hollow's science curriculum for book suggestions as we've struck gold several times there as well.

The Origami Yoda series focuses on a boy who is gifted with Asperger's.

Once I found it, R&S Math. My sons have very different learning styles, but it worked well for both of them.

I like it. I cracked up over the directions at the top. I agree that he needs to add more, but I can see myself using this often.

I'd consider using the Drama of American History series as a spine and cobbling together your own discussion questions and writing assignments. The series is outstanding, won't require too much reading, and is perfect for the age range you mention. Look up Build Your Library's 5th and 6th grade curricula for some wonderful suggestions for supplemental literature and videos.

I cater to the needs of each child, because otherwise, the work isn't getting done! My oldest & youngest are also roughly the way you describe.

Maybe we can do more in this area, but right now I make checklists of work & daily activities from Homeschool Planet and print them off each day. Both my sons will them over and oldest DS will check the boxes. We also have a paper calendar on the fridge with everyone's activities color coded. After years of OT and printing practice, oldest DS's handwriting is still illegible, so something electronic will work best, when he eventually moves towards being more proactive. Oldest ds also receives reminder emails from HSP and, I believe, could edit and add things himself if he wanted. It's extremely easy to use.

You all are so good! I'm chiming in on this thread for the first time. I'm trying to stick with my regular routine-- weights 3x/week and walking the dogs 45 minutes/day for 6 days/week. We've been dealing with snowpacolypse here in WA but have only just now gotten back out to walk the local trails. Several large trees were blocking the way, ugh. I hope the Park Service is able to make it out here soon to do some clearing.

I agree with fairfarmhand's definition. I think I am one as well. I am acutely aware of other people's emotions and it can take me days to shake off someone else's intense feelings. I tend to avoid intense/dramatic people whenever possible because I am so easily drained. I would change this about myself if I could.

Since both our boys have done well with R&S math, and because MP uses it as part of their curriculum, we went with College of the Redwoods prealgebra (also offered by MP) with our oldest ds and were very happy with it. It was as straightforward and easy to teach from as R&S has been. I am planning to use it next year with younger ds as well.

Prealgebra: MP College of the Redwoods Writing: Dictation, Killgallon Sentences, Wordsmith Apprentice Spelling: Finish Spelling Workout G, start grammar. Logic: Fallacy Detective, Logic Safari 3 Lit/History: BYL 7 Science: Chemistry, ACS and/or TOPS Band, Lego Robotics team, Track at ps.

Just another couple of recommendations for curricula: Sharon Hensley's book Homeschooling Children With Special Needs might be helpful, and you may wish to check out the Simply Classical Curriculum at Memoria Press. The readiness assessments could be useful for you and Cheryl Swope, the author, formerly taught special education, has a child with ASD, and makes herself available for support on their forum. I'm afraid I'm not much help when it comes to developing language. I was lucky; ds spoke in echolalia at 3, but responded exceptionally quickly and well to 1-2 hours per week of speech therapy, and, as I have related, was ready to read at the same age as his NT peers. He never had the kind of pronounced narrative language difficulties PeterPan describes. We had a poor experience with ABA, and never pursued it further. The people I know who pursued it successfully for their kids have had exceptional financial resources and/or great insurance at their disposal. I second the idea of discussing your options with your dh with regards to accessing services. I live in a liberal state, but services for and access to special education is terrible. I've had friends move to Massachusetts and California to access better services, and if I could go back and do it over, we probably would have moved too. It's much easier to do that than it is to constantly fight for access to basic services elsewhere. Dh has also deliberately tried to select companies with decent benefits, with mixed success.

Definitely get a second opinion. My son has always been social and he has always had ASD. I think you are wise not to limit yourself to classical materials. Use what works for you. Also, it was around first grade that I started to realize exactly how much ds struggled to pay attention. He could sit for about ten minutes at the very most. We started attention meds a year or so later and it helped quite a bit with both comprehension and retention. If he is doing well with Rod & Staff Math, why not keep using it, at whatever pace feels comfortable to you & him? My son with ASD thrived on the R&S approach (while floundering with other math curricula) and is currently completing Algebra I successfully this year, in ninth grade. I can confidently say he would not be where he is without the rock solid foundation he received from this curriculum. The structure and ongoing review was just what he needed and the program was very easy to teach from and adjust to his rate of learning. We have loved, loved, loved R&S Grammar as well. Those two programs have been our spines for years now. My son could not read at all after a year of whatever they were doing in ps kindergarten. I yanked him and for reading we used the Calvert curriculum reading program in first grade. He was reading at near grade level in two months. Although the rest of the program was a bust, their approach to reading was so successful for him I will always be grateful. They had phonics practice every day, and that was key for him. The other big help was the series of Houghton Mifflin readers starting with the book, Here We Go! I think there are four or five books in the series. They contained fun stories with featured sight words. So we would do phonics every day, read the stories in the readers, and set up a "word wall" to practice the sight words featured in the readers. Both my sons loved the HM books so much that we still own them and they are currently 15 and 12! I can't recommend buying an entire Calvert level just for reading, (though you can pick up the HM books used if you wish) but would advise a mix similar to this one. If you don't mind Bible stories, the R&S reading program would probably work very, very well. It also has the virtue of being inexpensive. Also: at that age I would also have classified my son as a visual learner who needed a lot of movement. When I bought curriculum tailored to that, it was a mistake. He needed predictable, structured lessons that could be lengthened or shortened as needed, with lots of review, far more than manipulatives or great illustrations, which were distracting and unnecessary for comprehension. My advice is to save the movement/sensory needs for play. Give him lots of fine & gross motor stuff to do and a trampoline, leave the visually distracting stuff until middle school or later. Aside: Sigh. We are neither conservative nor especially devout, so R&S upper level Reading, Social Studies, and Science aren't good fits for us, but their approach works so exceptionally well for my oldest (and pretty darn well for my younger ds too) that I start to wish we were every time I look over the Milestone Books website, lol. I can't do it though. If I could go back and reteach content at the elementary level, I would have used Core Knowledge materials, but I discovered those resources too late in the game for us.

Yes, those are red flags. Ask around your local autism community, and try to find the most experienced evaluator you can. The closest Children's Hospital might also be a good source of referrals. Good luck!

My oldest son's journey through math has also characterized by sloppy work and careless mistakes I also occasionally did not handle it well. What worked for us was to switch from mostly independent work to working out the problems one by one on a white board. It forced him to slow down and made it much harder for him to rush through the problems or try to guess at solutions. Since doing this, his math work has improved tremendously. We have been very happy with College of the Redwoods PreAlgebra and Prentice Hall Algebra as they are both easy to teach from--the lessons are in manageable chunks and don't require much prep. I've been very happy with the way concepts are presented as well.

The School for Good and Evil series. Well written and fun, female characters don't come much stronger than the main two, Agatha and Sophie. https://www.amazon.com/School-Good-Evil-Soman-Chainani/dp/006210490X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543286167&sr=8-1&keywords=the+school+for+good+and+evil+book+1

Keeping my fingers crossed that it went well!

Calvert, when I first started out. And their return policy is terrible. Sigh.

For LA, I'd recommend Rod and Staff or Essentials in Writing. For Math, Rod and Staff or Saxon. For science, I used the Let's Read and Find Out series at that age. My ASD child also struggled in reading but took off when he was exposed to direct instruction in phonics plus a list of basic sight words, which I reinforced with the 2005 Houghton Mifflin reading series. Both of my sons responded so well to, and have such fond memories of, the Houghton Mifflin stories that we still have the books. All of these are pretty much open and go. HTH!

Based on what you are saying, autism is a possibility. There are tons of resources online and more and more women with autism are speaking out about their experiences. A diagnosis could open up more resources and avenues for support, such as autism-specific counseling. Volunteer work that might help her: library, food bank, animal shelter, senior center, hospital. If she likes art, maybe an organization where she could help kids, seniors, etc. with art projects?

I've done it with kids that age. It's not so bad, mainly because hsing kids at young ages doesn't take long---a little math, phonics, and printing practice daily and you're golden, then reading aloud whenever you can fit it in. I got a lot done with my younger son in waiting rooms while my oldest was in therapy. The biggest hassle was being tied to the public school schedule.

The classical approach to history never worked all that well for us. My youngest especially, needs history to be less detailed and more directly relevant. This year, I found Core Knowledge history? https://www.coreknowledge.org/curriculum/history-geography/ This is one of the curricula I wish I'd seen 5 years ago. I love everything about it. Great discussion questions, engaging text, focuses on the big ideas. Some writing and some vocabulary--but fine if you just want to use for discussion. I highly recommend it!

I am allergic to cats but not to our house bunny. Currently we have a four year old blue eyed white Lionhead female. Younger ds got her for 4H a few years ago. I have a special bunny area--smallish bedroom--for her fitted out with rag rugs, grass mats, bunny enclosures, a litter box and a baby gate blocking the door, so if the dogs ever get upstairs, she is safe. Here's what I've found: Our bunny is very sweet and loves to be petted. LIke many bunnies, she hates being picked up, so I never pick her up unless she needs grooming. She is very food motivated and trainable; you can actually clicker train a bunny--so with treats and patience she could be trained to come up to greet me. She loves to dig and chew on things like lamp cords and books, so bunny-proofing is important. Toys are also important for mental stimulation. Our bun is about 4lbs, so she gets 1-3 cups of fresh greens, 1 tbsp of pellets, and unlimited hay daily. She is litter box trained. I spot clean the litter daily and clean it all out once per week. Her room needs vacuuming every 1-2 weeks. They should be spayed/neutered if you don't plan to breed. Ideally, she should have a companion bunny, but I don't have time to search for a suitable match (and am maxed out on animals right now anyway) and bunnies can be very particular about whom they bond with--so getting another is not a straightforward process. I just make sure she gets at least two solid petting sessions every day. This seems to be plenty. She is a great little pet and a lovely alternative to a cat, imo. Here's a site with all kinds of information and tips, as well as a great store: www.binkybunny.com Oh and in addition to the shelter, there is a great exotic vet in Woodinville too. She actually lived in England for a few years and specialized in rabbits.