The moment the light goes on...

I was going to write my final blog of the academic year tomorrow but this week has had so much to blog about I thought it would be better to get some of it down before swamping you with my rambles tomorrow! This week started on a flat note! The end of the week still seemed an eternity away for both of us and the prospect of getting through the final mental maths pages and then perhaps even more daunting "Money Maths"! Monday and Tuesday were a struggle! Then yesterday I decided to be spontaeous, break with my diary, down tools and take S down to a friend's farm for the day. While we'd been looking at the Olympics we learned that they used to train by carrying a calf on their shoulders. As the calf grew into a cow the athlete got stronger with the weight carried growing. This sparked off a big conversation with S about many things including names of baby animals which is still a big vocab hole for him. S expressed how much he would love to hold a lamb and learn how to talk to sheep. My friend who also home schools lives on a farm and I told her about this request. So, we were invited down and off we went. We had such a great day. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day for a drive south. At the farm we got a wee tour round the milking parlour, the calves, the hens and then S was taken on the quad bike up and around the fields to see the sheep. He loved it! We had lunch together of freshly baked bread and then the kids all played together whilst we put the world to right! S giggled away with his friend and was so happy! There are always little pointers with S as to how happy he is. There is an unrestrained laughter which to be honest we don't often see outwith the house as he is always working so hard to suss out a situation! He also went on the quad bike happily and ate the home made bread. These are 2 things completely out of his norm and comfort zone but he did it! A huge success! At the end of the day we were given loads of beautiful double yoked eggs to take home to the family. So a fantastic day. To see S so happy was just lovely. It did me so much good as well to speak to another home schooling mum who has similar dilemmas to me in various ways was so cathartic and to be out in the fresh air was much needed! So, this morning we approached our work with a fresh mind! We have really been struggling with subtraction and division and I have been losing patience. The penny has certainly not dropped and I was so reluctant to end the term on a negative note! It has been very interesting over the past couple of weeks to spend more time than normal with other home school families and to hear all the different ways of teaching. Some are very laid back in their approach to teaching their kids whilst some are really quite routinised. What is very clear about all of the parents is that they value their children just for being them and not for their achievements and abilities to "fit" in. I have been challenged about how rigid I am in working through our "curriculum" and not taking a step back to think about what is right for S at this moment. In my defense though I am so keen to teach S that when something is tricky or hard it is not right to just throw the towel in and not do it. I think sometimes with home schooling it can be very much the easier approach to abandon ship with a topic if it seems to evoke stress and be too hard. If I did this with S we would have done very very little since October. He wouldn't write, we wouldn't have touched money, time, multiplication, subtraction or symmetry! He would be an expert in his 6x table and could tell you all about fractions but that is all! Today was a perfect example of this. Following our pretty hopeless days on Monday and Tuesday I was dreading dragging him through the final pages of his mental maths book and maths workbook. After such a positive day yesterday I was determined to finish the term on a high! So, this morning I decided to try to take away all the anxiety from S that I could. S definitely is an auditory learner and finds it much harder to work out what he has to do simply by reading. I decided to read the questions to him and to be his scribe. This worked quite well for mental maths although still subtraction was not really clicking! I found a number square and decided to use that. Success! He flew through the final 10 questions. Now granted this is not mental maths but it's a strategy for S to use until he gets more and more familiar with the tasks! From this we moved onto the dreaded money. The first questions involved division. I knew they were going to be quite tricky for him. He's so tired that he is much slower than he is capable of and so I continued to scribe. For the first time though I drew a number line along the top of his workbook following the success of the number line in subtraction. It was great! The penny started to drop! What was the best bit was by the 2nd batch of money questions S took the pen out of my hand and said, "I want to do this next one. Let me do it!" It was fantastic. He had a spark! He had a twinkle in his eye and was ENJOYING his maths! We flew through the final two pages! It reminded me why I went into teaching in the first place. To be able to teach someone and for a topic to come alive is just fab! You may be thinking I'm getting a little overexcited at really quite a minor unexciting thing but I feel this has been a milestone in many ways! If I'd decided to just let S dictate what we studied we would have abandoned this topic and had a long long break from it. What I am learning though is that the excitement at grasping a difficult topic is so great for both S and I but actually more so for S that it is so good to persevere! Yes it is quite dull at times and yes it's a long road but the skills mastered are lifelong in many ways! I bet your glad I didn't put all this in tomorrow's blog! I'm asking S to write a "report" on his first year of home school to go with a report I will write (just in case the council do want to know which from what I've heard is doubtful!!). I'm fascinated to see what he writes!

So who exactly is on the spectrum?

We're nearly there... This term seems to be going on forever! At the same time though I have a scary amount to fit in to the following two and a half weeks so in many ways would like the days to have extra hours in them! Since I last blogged I have had much food for thought. S's diagnosis has been defined and finally, after many years, I feel that we can now really begin to understand and help S rather than survive with him and stay afloat! Saying all that increasingly, with regards to home schooling, I have been having to reign myself in from my own "spectrum" tendancies and be more aware of my son! Let me explain that! We have got ourselves into a great routine. I'm sure I've explained this before so bear with me as I spell it out once more. We begin each day with 15-30 mental arithmetic questions. We then do a page of S's maths workbook which is preceded by a little bit of teaching or revision. This is sometimes then followed by a game on Education City. After maths we have a wee break. Once fed and watered we return to spelling which is either 1 or 2 tasks on the week's words from his Andrew Brodie book. We then read a chapter of his reading book (Monday - S reads to me and then Tues-Friday we do paired reading) followed by a short activity or discussion on the chapter. This is followed by a language activity of some description whether that be a reading comprehension card, a page of grammar work, story writing or an education city game. Depending on how long maths and English take we then do Science work (either practical or book work related depending on our topic), or we do some Geography (we've been working on the continents this term) or some other activity. We then stop for lunch. That can be any time from 12:20-1:00pm depending on how long the work has taken. So it's quite structured! I'm so aware that we are in many ways more formal than many home school families are and I know that some would think I am kind of missing the point of home schooling by keeping it so formal. It has been implied that I'll in effect "grow out" of this way of schooling S and that I'll eventually become more relaxed. But you know it works for us! For S he knows now exactly where he stands and actually can go to the desk and almost work through the programme for the day himself. For me it has reduced the preparation massively and I am confident that S is learning the same as his peers in the main subject areas and that he will hopefully manage to keep up. Flexibility... well, that's a whole other area! Where I am noticing how "spectrumy" I am becoming! As S has become more and more tired at the end of term I am having to reduce our timetable quite a lot. S is coping with this fine! I however am finding it quite frustrating as I know we will not be completing work that I'd hoped we would. I really need to relax!! Today for example, I was wrapping presents for our girls' birthday and S asked if he could help. He did and he really enjoyed it! He then asked if he could learn to tie his shoe laces. I shocked myself and thought, "why not!" and so we mastered knot tying as the first step. It was a real learning point for me. Wrapping presents and tying shoe laces is not something that comes easily to someone on the spectrum and for S this was real life learning in a calm and stress free situation! Surely that is better than struggling through the basics of division when he's tired! I have been mulling over many other issues over the past few days. As I come to terms S's more specific diagnosis I am learning AGAIN just how much I need to challenge my own views of parenting with respect to S. I love him just as much as my other 3 children and want to offer him the same opportunities in life as the others. I am realising more and more though that things are not straight forward for him and that I really need to stop expecting him to just slot in to what other children can do. Being a parent for the past 10 + years has shown me just how judgemental I was and can be about other parents and indeed children and I'm mortified to admit that. Having a child with special needs has really highlighted that in me and made me really face up to what really is important in people and humanity as a whole. Being a Christian has really been a saving grace to me literally! To know that S and indeed all my children have been "fearfully and wonderfully made" is such a blessing to know and to know that God has a plan for each of these children and he has them in the palm of his hand. I must continue to strive to do my best for each of these children as I really do believe that this is the job God has given me to do just now. Very philosophical this week! I hope to blog again before the end of term but we are moving back to our own house (now it is all fixed :0) ) and so the next 3 weeks are likely to be somewhat mental! I'd love any feedback. Maybe you think I'm talking rubbish! For now though I will sign off!

The end of the tunnel is coming...

I am amazed that my last post was so long ago! The weeks are flying past! That surely is a good thing... So how has this term been? Overall I think things are going well and the fact that I haven't blogged in so long is probably a reflection that there hasn't been anything particularly of note to write about which I think is good! We have plodded on with our routine this term as much as we can. We are getting through the workbooks and topics and have accomplished quite a lot academically this term. The sun and the heat have been unusual obstacles for us to overcome! Neither of us are very good at dealing with the heat so it's just as well this is a rare problem for us to have! Having said that it did work to our advantage! For example, a lot of our maths this term has been revision of what we have done through the year. Symmetry came up. This was one topic that didn't quite click when we looked at it at first. This time though we were studying it when we were sitting outside at the "new" garden table which has an opaque black glass top. I pointed out to S the reflection of the objects in the table and how that was just like symmetry. It was lovely - the penny immediately dropped and we were off! Basic symmetry is now sorted! Over this term I have begun to realise just how much I depend on a routine as much as S! I'm so aware that a lot of home school mums are beginning to wind down as summer approaches and that there are so many distractions that things can change quite a lot. I don't find that so easy. S certainly doesn't find that easy and if we have one different day I pay for it by having two difficult days until we are back into the flow of it. I don't think that is helpful or fair for him and so try as much as possible to keep our maths, english and topic (which does change every day whether it be geography, history or science) going every day. Afternoons are totally flexible and that seems to work. I have been struck this week though at how tired S is. His stammer is returning and his stress levels are beginning to rise. The point of home schooling is to avoid this so I'm going to reassess my planning for the next 3 weeks to see if I can somehow change it to take the pressure completely off. I don't want to undo all the positives of the last few months by him becoming so exhausted that we go backwards! As my confidence is improving on the teaching side of things I am also beginning to see where we need to help him in other areas. I am very fed up of the moaning and groaning that comes with the beginning of each home school day. S has such a big moan and then once he gets down to work is great and seems to forget it. I however find it far harder to listen to such an exaggerated moan and then put it behind me! So, I have had to spell out consequences for his moan! We now have a points system and for everyday that he has monumental moans he loses a point and will fall down a point on the ladder. If he ultimately gets to 1 then I will phone a school! If however he doesn't moan and works hard he will stay up at home. We got to 8 this week but no further down and having just introduced the system this week it transformed the atmosphere in the house! We'll see how long that has mileage but i did explain to him that a positive relationship between myself and him was so important to me and if that was spoiled by home schooling then we would have to rethink the whole thing! I am so aware I need to start introducing more work on strategies to help him to deal with things in life he finds tricky. This is one area I so wish I knew more home schooling mums of kids with special needs! We have so much appreciated all our home school friends that we have made (mums and kids alike) but none of my friends are dealing with children on the spectrum and that can be a lonely experience! As our time together goes on it is fascinating seeing the areas that S really likes. He loves History and Geography! The reading books that we have done (Time Capsule - Oxford Reading Tree) have been fantastic in introducing different times in history. A big favourite was one about the 2nd world war which led us to look at Anne Frank. We found a great website that let us tour the Secret Annexe. S was fascinated by it! We have also been looking in Geography at maps and different continents. Again he has loved this and has really enjoyed finding out about different countries and cultures. This is so interesting for me. I never really liked history! To be honest I found it quite boring! Geography was similar although I did enjoy doing a crash higher in it in 6th year but think I would have hated doing a higher the traditional long way! This really tests my teaching though as I need to keep history and geography alive for him as he is so interested! I'm so pleased to see him so interested! My mum came over one day this term and spent the day teaching S. It was great! Mum was so creative with him and S just loved it! It was so special hearing them working together and really gave me such a break! It is good that what she did with him was so different and he coped really well with that. Hopefully we can do this more. Some folks have offered to help out and I think next term I might start taking them up on the offer more. So, my attention is now beginning to shift to next term. I am amazed we have made it to nearly the end of our 3rd term and it's gone so well. The other 3 kids are very happy too which is fantastic. I am starting to plan next year and S is happy to chat about it to. There's a LOT to happen before then though.... So, a long post but hopefully an encouraging post to update you on some of the things that have happened. I'll hopefully write again before the end of the school year!