With current economic woes, it's no surprise that an alliance of Washington State school districts have filed a lawsuit against the state alleging underfunding of special education funding. In this historic case, the alliance's position is that the state has failed to provide the additional funding needed to adequately serve children with disabilities and fulfill the many administrative and procedural requirements of the IDEA. If the school districts prevail, this could have implications for similar actions in other states. Want to learn more about special education finance? Check out the Center for Special Education Finance.

Does your child have a favorite special education teacher who deserves a pat on the back? This is teacher appreciation week, which gives you a good excuse to send some kudos her way. Teachers are easy to pleas and will appreciate even simple tokens of appreciation. Here are some ideas:

• Simple Teacher Appreciation Craft
• Help your child write a thank you note for specific things his teacher has done.
• Creative Teacher Gifts
• Volunteer to help the teacher with classroom chores such as creating bulletin board letters or typing up a parent newsletter.
• Donate crayons, pencils, or other class materials, or donating items for the class reward box.
• Send the principal a note praising the teacher for his special efforts.
• Send doughnuts for the teacher's lounge.
• Volunteer for organized school activities, and let your child's teacher know you're doing it out of appreciation for her work.
• Remember your child's occupational, physical, or speech therapy providers too.

Vacation season is just around the corner, and families are planning and budgeting to get the best possible trip in these economically trying times. Planning ahead can help your kids have a better time too. Try these tips and strategies to educate, entertain, and to manage problem behaviors and make the family traveling experience a success:

• Thinking Skills Games for Home, School, Travel - Ways to Teach Thinking Skills
• Manage Your Child's Behavior While Traveling - Control Problem Behaviors
• Problems Traveling with ADHD? Hyperactivity Threatening That Vacation Car Trip?

As we near the end of the school year, many of you will be invited to attend your child's annual review. Although annual reviews can be held at any time of the school year, many schools hold them in the spring because it is a good time to plan for the next school year and determine if summer Extended School Year services are required. Learn more about annual review meetings, what they involve, and what to do if you disagree with the IEP team during the review meeting. More on IEP Team Meetings

• Special Education Policy
• Parents' Rights under IDEA
• Understanding IEP Team Meetings
• What Should I Wear to an IEP Team Meeting?
• Meet Your IEP Team Members
• Disciplinary IEP Team Meetings
• Deciding on the Least Restrictive Environment for Your Child
• Parent Teacher Conferences

Now is the time to begin planning for summer services or study at home for your child with learning disabilities. Keeping some study and practice going over the summer can help your child by reducing the loss of skills. Learn how to plan learning activities for the summer break.

• Teaching Math Over School Break
• Keep Reading During Summer
• Teaching Your Child Writing at Home

Assistive technology is revolutionizing the way all students learn. As the use of computer technology increases and diversifies, schools opportunities are improving for children with disabilities to access the general curriculum. Teachers are finding that even students with severe disabilities can participate in the mainstream with the help of assistive technology, as detailed in this">Boston Globe article. Learn More About Inclusion in the Mainstream

• What is Inclusion?
• What You Need to Know about Inclusion
• Understanding the Least Restrictive Environment
• What is Mainstreaming?
• Mainstreaming Strategies for Educators
• An Alternative Opinion on Inclusion from Autism on About.com

All About Parenting Blog Carnival: Road Trips!

If you're a blogger, we'd like to invite you to submit a blog entry for our All About Parenting Blog Carnival, hosted by the Parenting Guides at About.com. The theme for June's carnival is "Road Trips." If your submission is chosen, we'll publish a link to it on this blog.

Here's how to participate:

• Write a family and kids-focused blog post that fits the "Road Trips" theme. The deadline for submissions is May 26, 2008.
• Link to this Carnival Invitation post somewhere in your submission.
• Submit the title of your post, the permalink and your name and email address to babyproducts.guide@about.com.
• Please read the blog carnival guidelines before submitting. You can also visit "What is a Blog Carnival?" to learn more.
• If you have further questions, feel free to drop me an email at learningdisabilities.guide@about.com.

A child's work is indeed a child's play, and this month on About.com's Parenting channel, your guides and guests from across the net have collected great resources, information, tips, tricks, and just plain fun focused on kids and play. Check out these great reads on gardening with your kids, clubs for kids, the benefits of play and the learning process, and much more.

If you enjoy this month's blog carnival, be sure to check out next month's plans for great family road trips hosted by About.com's guide for Baby Products, Heather Corley!

If you're a romance reader who has enjoyed titles such as the Heart of Texas series 6 Rainier Drive, or 16 Lighthouse Road, you may not have realized you were holding a true romance in your hands. Irish author Debbie Macomber has Dyslexia and did not learn to read until she was eleven years old. But she did not allow her disability to stand between her and her true love of writing and reading.

While life with Dyslexia and other reading disabilities is not easy, children with these learning disabilities can survive and even thrive! Find resources you need to understand reading disabilities and help your child reduce the negative impact of Dyslexia on his life:

• Learning Disabilities in Basic Reading
• Learning Disabilities in Reading Comprehension
• Dyslexia - A Type of Learning Disability
• Diagnosis of Learning Disabilities
• Referring Your Child for Assessment
• Ways to Encourage Reluctant Readers
• Teaching Early Sight Words
• Teach Your Child Reading Comprehension
• Enriching Early Reading Skills
• High Interest, Low Reading Ability Books for Kids and Teens

Tools for Educators and Parents: If you've already explored learning disabilities in general and are ready to learn more about your child's individual thinking processes, www.ldinfo.com offers free trials on a Cognitive Processing Inventory (CPI) for the assessment of information processing skills, and evaluation of learning styles for educators, parents, and evaluation professionals to assist with identifying children's strengths and weaknesses. Ratings scales such as these can be helpful tools to help teachers and parents develop interventions and strategies to support learning.

Teens and adults with disabilities and mental health issues have unique rights in the workplace that ensure they have reasonable supports. Sadly, some employers are not fully informed about disability rights, and some are downright nasty about it. In the worst case scenarios, employers may harass and intimidate employees with disabilities in effort to avoid providing the adaptations and accommodations required by civil rights laws. Some even attempt to force people with disabilities out, as was alleged in the disturbing case of James Colby, who suffered from severe depression.

If you or your child are disabled, it is important to know your rights in the workplace. Hopefully, you will never encounter this type of discrimination, but just in case:

• Managing Learning Disabilities in the Workplace
• Learning Disabled Adults in the Workplace
• Working With a Disability
• The ADA Protects People with Disabilities at Work
• Workplace Resources for People with Disabilities