What a difference a couple of weeks can make! Dare I say it, after nearly 6 months of home schooling I feel that we have finally started to settle into a routine. The "new" way of working seems to be a success. S is happier and I am getting less frustrated! We have learnt many new things over the last fortnight and only the one day of stand offs that I wrote about before!
Using all the new material has made planning a lot easier for me and has made the lessons a lot simpler. S now knows that there is a routine we will follow and that once he's completed all his "jobs" his time is his own.
Both of us so easily can slip into bad habits. For S, the habit of moaning about even beginning to work is a habit that will be hard to break. I'm hoping that eventually that does disappear but am beginning to accept that that is S and that if I don't react to it then it is fairly short lived!
My habit is to pile on far too much work to him! Because things are going well my tendancy is to push him further! In turn that makes him uncooperative and stroppy! In turn that makes me frustrated and grumpy. On Wednesday I had to give myself a wake up call when I looked at what I had planned for the following fortnight! There was FAR too much Maths! So, thankfully, I realised BEFORE the term began and have revised my plans for him that should lead to a happier term! My desire to "complete" workbooks and to have a sense of satisfaction is a really big temptation for me to overcome when I am teaching him. Actually, to have a happier, more content son who is enjoying learning is ultimately far more rewarding but in my perfectionist tendancies I like to have completed workbooks and a sense of completion by certain dates! I think I will have to continue to strive to lose that desire!!
Over the past few weeks we have been looking at punctuation marks; commas, question marks, capitilisation, full stops and exclamation marks. We have also started writing stories on the laptop. What a big hit! S loves it! He has started writing a story about ghosts and is enjoying letting his imagination run away with him. I am thoroughly enjoying watching this process. As I write S is acting out his story with his sister (who is off again with the cold!) and is so excited. When we began home schooling S HATED story writing and hated writing. To see him so enthusiastic about his stories is lovely. The word processor encourages him to correct his stories with all the red, green and blue underlining (those bits that normally are such a pain!) and I have started encouraging him to read his stories out aloud at the end which is working well as he can hear any more mistakes.
The other big success is that this week he asked me if he could do the reading comprehension card, because, wait for it... he loves them! Again, 5 months ago this was a dread and a real low point but he loved it. He loves it when I read it to him and he then answers the questions. It has become very apparent to me this week that his language difficulties are beginning to impact more and more on other curricular areas. In comprehension he does really well if he listens and then answers the questions but if he is left to read on his own it's a different story. In maths as well, if I sit and read the question to him he often finds the answer really quickly and easily but if left to his own devices he is stuck straight away! Problem solving is very hard for him - far too much language to decipher. With all these in mind I am so relieved to have him at home and am slowly beginning to relax and feel happy that we can use freely things like the laptop, me or any other thing that helps him to work through his work. At school I would imagine now he would be needing a laptop and later on a scribe so I am hoping that I can equip him with the skills and strategies needed to get the tasks done.
This week on the BBC a programme started following children at a High School in Edinburgh. It featured a boy on the autistic spectrum with Aspergers. If there was ever a programme that would make me certain not to have S in mainstream then that was it! I could have wept! What the producers of the programme and the teachers of the school considered to be him "settling in" and coping I saw as a little boy being subtly bullied and really not coping. It was horrible to see him having to eat his lunch on his own in a quiet corner of the school. It is the worst feeling in the world to feel lonely in a school and when a child has difficulties of his own then this is so much more exagerrated! If I can save S from having to deal with all this at a time when he is going through adolescence then I will do all I can to do that!
One last wee thought! I realise some folks reading this blog will not be religious and this all might sound a bit odd to them but a real step forward for me has been that I have timetabled in for me half an hour before I start teaching every day to sit and read my Bible and to pray. Having this in my day has made a massive difference. I cannot get over how practical a book the Bible is and how appropriate it ALWAYS is to life whatever stage or situation it is. I have had the opportunity every day now to hand the day over to God and to rely on Him rather than my own impatience and struggles. Funny then when after praying for patience S has asked if we can fall out today cos he'd like to fall out!! But, what a difference!
Anyway, must go prepare the lunch. Our home school week is finished and it's time for a break!
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