The excitement of learning!

I'm 3.5 weeks post op now! November seems like a bit of a write off to me but then I'm so much better and so far I think the op has been a success which is great. (athough it's very early days to know this!) Since I last wrote we have got into a great wee routine of us working down at the sofa. I thought the control freak side of me would really struggle to have S at home without the routine of "Independent Learning" and "Together Time" and all the things we have got so used to doing. However, I have been a lot more aware of when S is learning things rather than going through the motions. Admittedly we are not nearly doing the same volume of work as we were but I think the quality of learning has been really good! S has now tackled "money" and "division". Both of these topics he dreaded but has become quite quick at them as the penny has dropped (no pun intended!!). For money it took him over an hour to complete each page. If he was in school there is no way he would have been allowed to spend so long on one task! This is the beauty of home schooling! It might seem that we are not achieving very much but actually we can work until the concepts are understood and then not waste time the next day trying to unpick badly learnt concepts! We did spend A LONG time on money last week but today he completed a task on education city and got 100 per cent which was great! Outwith maths S has been working on his Volcano project. This has been a relatively successful venture! Most of the time I have given S a topic to find out about and left him to it. My perfectionist tendancies have not coped very well with his presentation but to give him his due he has found out about each of the topics and seems to have understood what he has read about. Today, we spent an hour reading about volcanoes today and discussing them and he loved it! He asked so many questions and was fascinated by it all! When S is interested he continually tells you back what he is learning just to make sure he has understood the concept so today the whole time was punctuated with "so basically...". Whilst it was quite a full on session and exhausting for me it was so lovely to see him engaging so much with the topic and material! That was what I loved about teaching in the first place. Forget that I am trained to teach RMPS; to see a child so excited about learning and understanding anything is fantastic! So, I am happy with how things have gone. We haven't done very much formal reading or English but actually we have been reading and comprehending for a lot of the time and I am pleased with how he has begun to show a eal understanding of what we are reading. I'm not sure how the following few weeks will go. As I feel stronger I am aware that I am beginning to want him to do more and at the same time once I am back to full strength I am determined that we start to go out more and that I start to socialise more and in turn S socialises more. The house whilst being a comfort in times of recuperation can also be a bit of a prison and I think for both of our well being we need to get out more!!

Home schooling with new challenges!

I would totally understand if not a soul is following this blog now as it has been so long since I have updated it! However, we ARE still here and we ARE still working away! We have now passed our anniversary of a year of home school! That was a huge milestone for me to reach. For S, I think it was too although maybe less significant! For me we made it through a year! S has learned a lot. I have learned a lot and more importantly I don't think our relationship has suffered at all and I am not completely insane! Looking back over the year has been good. Lots of highlights to celebrate which is great. At the same time I realise that personally for me how much life has shrunk and how little I am socialising with my friends. That has been the hardest part of home schooling. On the one hand I have made some fantastic new friends amongst the home school community who I have learned so much from and who I admire and like so much. On the other hand though in some ways I feel like I've drifted out of circulation from my other friends. I've chatted to S about the isolation factor and we have both agreed that next term this will change! The biggest change since I last wrote is that I've not long had major surgery! This has been on the cards for months and we have known about it for long enough to prepare. In a large part encouraging "Independent Learning" time was to prepare for this time. It's not all gone exactly to plan... If I'd been working I would have been officially signed off for 6 weeks. If my 4 children had all been at school I would have had a child free house from 9-3 everyday giving me all those hours to recuperate! As it is I have S and I have a responsibility. Thankfully I wasn't in hospital for very long and thanks to family being brilliant I had a full week of no teaching responsibilities which was just as well as I was fit for nothing. This week has been different. When I'm not very well I get very emotional easily (I'm sure so many could relate to this!). On Monday as I sat and tried to plan the week ahead with my immobility being a reality and no longer a future concept I found myself struggling to plan and to concentrate and to not get emotional! I realised very quickly that I had to somehow work out a way of working with S that suited both my emotional well being and his! I'm happy to say that 4 days later we seem to have struck a perfect balance! I think many think I'm bonkers to keep going just now teaching but I think that if I didn't I would really be cheating S and in the long run does him no favours at all. He so much needs to know his boundaries and his routine. If he was to be left to his own devices not only would he get bored and difficult very quickly but he also would be very difficult to get back on track when I'm totally recovered. The recovery period for this op unfortunately is quite long so we needed to come up with a long term strategy! So, our new routine is that as soon as the other 3 have left for school we sit on the sofa together and work through our maths, reading and English for the day. We don't set a limit on this but it takes us about an hour to do this. This week we've cracked "division" - a topic that S dreaded adn thought he couldn't do. Well he can now! After this I have set S a project - for the following 2 weeks he is going to find out all about volcanoes and after 2 weeks he will print it off and give it to me. This will be his "independent learning" and will include, reading, comprehension, story writing, ICT and art so will cover a lot of things. We've only been doing it for a few days but already he has spent 2 hours on it so I'm really pleased. At this time I go back to bed to rest and sleep. This means that I can with a clear conscience still say that I am teaching S but also that I am able to rest properly and not resent having him to teach. It's working really well! At the end of this week I feel that we really have achieved something and can see that for the next month we have a practical way to work. I'm sure there are plenty more things I could write about but "home schooling when mum is sick" is a big thing for me and one I worried about and I am sooooooo relieved to have worked out some sort of solution that is workable for us both!