After thankfully a good night's sleep I was all geared up for a productive day. S on the other hand was not! Every single step of the way was a real struggle today! I really didn't think he took much in at all and today was needing to stand my ground to get him to get through any of the work that I had planned for him to do. This morning saw the confiscation of a wii game and the postponement of snack time until he had completed tasks that I considered to be quite straight forward. Quite honestly it was painfully slow and hard to get him to do anything!!
However, I persevered and eventually he got through the maths, english and geography work that he needed to get through. Today we looked at right angles and parallel lines and then did a puzzle and Education City game on polygons which he got full marks on which was great. Then, in reading I left him to read alone and then answer 10 true/false questions on what he'd read. As suspected he read really quickly and then guessed all the answers. After 3 attempts at the questions he gave in and sat and read the pages I'd given to help him to answer the questions and - guess what - he got full marks! He did a page on spelling words too which again he tried to rush and had to repeat by reading properly! After this I did a bit of work with the road atlas. Yesterday's maths sheet involved grid references. He actually quite enjoyed this so today I got him to find 10 towns across the British Isles using the grid references and page numbers. He LOVED this! That was the easiest piece of work he had to do!
That was our days work today. If he worked without moaning he would have got through all of that fairly quickly - however, it seemed to take an age. I was not convinced much had gone in at all. How wrong I could be! Later on in the day he came and presented me with a map he had drawn of the area. I looked at it and then turned the page to find a whole page on polygons and parallel lines that he had taught his imaginary class with! I was gobsmacked!!! After all his protests he had taken EVERYTHING in that I had said and regurgitated it to these imaginary classmates.
What I've not included until now is that S was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum just a few months ago. This was huge news for us and continues to be a big time learning curve for us and particularly me as I work with him. I've not mentioned it on the blog up until now as that is not the reason why we are home schooling S and I want to try to keep certain things private. However, today was a day that all that happened was very "autistic" and not really explicable in any other way! The more I find out about what is going on in his head the more that days like today make sense and not make me want to throw the towel in! Today was one of those days that it was a big reminder that you can never second guess kids and particularly not kids with autism! S is so happy at home and although he complains constantly at home school time and can make teaching him so infuriating it is such a precious thing to be able to see the gems come in amidst all the hard times and to be able to help him.
Moving day is Saturday and as yet we have no internet or phone connection in the house!! We will be getting access to the internet for S everyday but not at the house so my blogging from here on in may be a little sketchy! It will be good for me though not to lose every night to surfing, facebooking and blogging!
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