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!

And we're off...

Blogger in it's infinite wisdom has changed and "updated" so I hope this works!! I did start trying to type this on my phone but as I am constantly making mistakes I thought it would be wiser to wait until I got a moment to type it properly! When I was a "real" teacher my head of department once described the beginning of the school year like the entrance to a long tunnel. At the beginning of the session we would be heading into that long tunnel, not to be seeing daylight again until the light at the end of June! Well, I am once again empathising with that view again as we start another term. I have to admit that the feeling did consume me last Monday as the prospect of another term lay ahead and what I could have been doing had S been at school flashed through my mind... But, more positively here was another term to learn new things together, to settle even more into routines and to working together and is full of so much promise with so many different things going on. I am so encouraged. This term has started so much more positively than I ever could have predicted. My aim for this term is to build on the maths and english that we are now in a good routine with. This term though we need to spread our wings a wee bit in a curricular sense and learn about other things. To start with we are going to look at the human body. Years ago David and I stupidly signed up to one of these "Build your own skeleton" magazine deals. Several hundred pounds later and a ridiculous number of magazines and muscles later we cancelled our subscription as we realised we'd been well and truly sucked into this deal. We have kept all the issues and the bones etc and I have decided that rather than hide it away in the cupboard in disgrace "Jimmy" (as S has named him!) should be built and studied and put to some good use!! So, the term has started and already after just 2 weeks we have established science on a Tuesday afternoon. As I type the ribs, heart, lungs and spine are lying behind me! S took no time at all to settle back into the term and amazingly has worked independantly for much of the time. I was in no way anticipating him to be working like this yet! I was hoping to begin to encourage this for next year and to start setting little projects but a few times over the last fortnight I have laid the work out on the desk and found him working his way through it! He has even started looking at my planner and working out what he is to do! It is so good!! The workbooks we began in March are great and still working a treat. They seem to be on just the right level for him and are taking us in a very logical way through the topics we need to look at. Other positives are in English. His story writing is definitely beginning to take shape and there is evidence that the time spent on punctuation, sentence structure, adjectives and verbs etc is beginning to pay off which is lovely. Today, we read through some poems. I used to HATE poetry at school. I found it dull and on the whole pointless (apart from war poetry that I found fascinating). Today I wanted to introduce some work on it and simply read 5 or 6 poems to him. It was so good to see his face light up as he worked out what was really happening in the poem or as he simply enjoyed the humour. That is one of those times that I just love teaching and what better pupil to have than your own child!! The weekend was a great time for us. Our church play host to an American School every couple of years and all the students are spread out across the families in the area. We had 2 boys. We spent time with these boys and a lot of their friends and it quickly became evident that many of them had been home schooled for their primary school days. This was so good for S and I to chat about and not feel like the odd ones out. These young folks were lovely and so confident in their faith and themselves that it was such an encouragement. All of them spoke positively about their home schooling experience and in fact many of them spoke about how they would like to do it themselves when they start families. In the back of my mind I always remember that we are experiencing both types of schooling with my other 3 at school and we are still sure that that is the best place for them to be but for S it was really good to see that these "home schooled" kids were normal, fun and intelligent and that S could do just as well as them! So, that's quite a ramble for my first post back! I'm so glad it's Friday as I type. We've only been back 2 weeks but I am tired and looking forward to a couple of days off! That light at the end of the tunnel is nearly there...

We're done!!!!

I can't believe it is so long since I last wrote! The days are flying! I also can't believe it is the holidays again although at the same time I am so thankful they are hear and so much looking forward to 2 weeks of no lesson planning or teaching!

Things have been going well since I last wrote. The new regime is definitely working and I feel that we have found the way of working that works for both S and I. Preparation is not taking nearly as long and more importantly I am beginning to see results from S, he is happier and we are definitely making progress. I do have to continually give myself a wake up call as whenever things go well I have a tendancy to immediately increase the work load which is not good and I almost immediately get a reality check as S tires very quickly and the co-operation disappears!

This term has been a good term for really getting to terms with basics! We have worked hard on mental arithmetic and basics of spelling and grammar. When we first began our home schooling journey I was disappointed at how slow S was with his mental arithmetic. Having grown up in a schooling culture where we were drilled in mental arithmetic daily I have taken it for granted how helpful that is in life! While S is only 8 just now I was disappointed at how slow he was even with the most basic mental arithmetic questions. Since February we have been working through a book where everyday S answers 15 questions. Ideally these are supposed to be timed but that was proving to be too stressful for S so we took the timed element away. At first S relied on my numberline on the bookshelf for every single question. I decided that I would let this happen as I wanted his confidence to build first rather than me stressing him out over something he clearly found difficult. Over the last 4-5 weeks it has been great watching his confidence build. Without the timer it would take him 3-4 minutes to complete the sums and gradually his accuracy was improving. Yesterday he completed all 15 sums in probably just over a minute and got 14 correct. More encouragingly, as I told him, I watched him (he didn't know this) and he didn't once look at the number line! I was so so happy for him! We are calling this his warm up every day and we will continue it next term as I see the value of this so much! Next term we are going to work on S's times tables and include the mental arithmetic of his tables too.

Spelling likewise has become an easy part of each day which before February we really were not getting on top of. Again we have found material which helps both of us to work consistently through blends and spelling rules and S seems to be enjoying doing the work and achieving success.

This term the focus has definitely been on maths and english (including within that arithmetic, problem solving, reading, spelling, comprehension, story writing, grammar) and I am very aware that we have not done much formal science, geography, history etc. Having said that it is amazing what comes out of his reading books! This term they have included Leondardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Scientific discoveries and Elizabethan England to name just a few! Naturally we have found ourselves having discussions about all of those things. We have also been following the growth of the frog spawn which our neighbour gave us. As I type we have a flora tub full of tadpoles in the back garden. As these grow legs we will return them to the pond and hopefully see little frogs before long. The same neighbour has got us involved in weather tracking for the met office which has been great. It has linked well with our maths on measuring and on data handling as we have charted the maximum and minimum temperatures and looked for rainfall and hours of light. Luckily for us this has been a record breaking week for sunshine and temperatures so that has added excitement.

This term has also seen more obstacles for us. The summer is definitely going to be trickier to sit and concentrate when the weather is so good. S is not so good at working outwith a routine and so I don't see a huge future in learing outside or messing up the routine we have very much. Alongside that the family have had a couple of weeks of bad colds where the twins have been off a fair bit and that has made things far more complicated. Despite all that we've done a lot this term and once again at the end of the term I am very happy with how S's doing and that we are still doing the right thing having him at home. Next term I would really like him assessed in some way. I need to encourage him to work more independantly, which with his language difficulties is actually beginning to prove quite difficult even with maths, as his language processing skills are being utilized more. I need though to constantly remind myself of how far we have come and what obstacles we have overcome to get where we are and put everything into perspective!

For now though Happy Easter everyone and see you for the summer term!

Old Habits Die Hard!

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!

I'm getting better - apparently!

It's been a big week for me in the world of home schooling! Our learning curve has gone steeply up but I am feeling we have finally made some significant progress!

Last week the ed psych came to visit us. Since coming out of the "system" we don't have formal visits anymore but thankfully the ed psych agreed to continue to work with us, giving me some very valuable professional advice if and when I need it. Thursday's visit was such an encouragement and helpful visit. She agreed to look at some of S's work and gave me some pointers as to the quantity of work and simple things as to the presentation of his tasks. I wasn't overly surprised when she told me I was doing too much with him and that I was putting far too much on a page for him. It seemed so obvious when she pointed it out that I felt a bit daft but was immediately quite motivated to do something about it!

The way I have always taught, whether that be in a formal classroom set up or in a Sunday school set up or anywhere, is to produce my own materials. I work at my best when I know exactly what is behind a question and understand the logic behind the topic. I've carried this on with S but am beginning to have to admit that this is not working for him! My mind doesn't work like his! My learning style is not his! My strengths are not the same as his and likewise my weaknesses are not his! I feel like I have had quite a significant wake up call in how to teach! Again, you can get away almost with teaching a large class in a certain way. There are bound to be a certain number of pupils who click with your particular style of teaching and learning. On a one-to-one basis though there is no hiding! After chatting with the ed psych I have decided to take a different approach and have ordered in some new text books which are well written and look attractive and mean that I can pace the work far more appropriately!

So, this week our new approach started! What a difference! Please don't get me wrong - it's not been plain sailing! It'll take a while for S's negativity towards any sort of "work" being mentioned to be changed but our actual time learning has been really quite good! He has really enjoyed the drop in the amount of work I am asking him to do (not surprisingly really!) and is finding the level far more appropriate! He said to me yesterday (completely unprompted), "mum, you are getting to be a better teacher! At first you were a good teacher. The second day you were not so good, the third day even more not so good and by the fifth you were rubbish! You are getting better now!" and then today he offered me one of his special sweets as a reward for becoming a "better teacher"! Fortunately, I learned fairly early on in the home schooling process to develop a thick skin! I have to laugh!

So this week we've done a fair bit of learning even though he thinks he's done less! We've benefitted hugely from the flexibility of home schooling. We've started to look at measuring - length, mass and volume and have had great fun measuring things from all over the house and finished by making custard creams - when S got to measure all the ingredients. We've done some reading, looked at commas, studied the sun, looked at spelling -ing words, worked on mental arithmetic and plenty more!

One thing I am really struck with now is how much I really KNOW my son. We as parents pride ourselves, and rightly so, on the fact that we "know" our children best! I've been really challenged by how little I did really know my son. When it came to learning I knew so little about S! I have realised that for all those hours when he was packed off to school I handed over such a big chunk of his time to other people! I am really having to work hard at learning just what does go on in his head! I'm learning what and who S really is in EVERY aspect of his life and am valuing him more and more every day! I feel that I am beginning to really KNOW my son! It makes me feel quite guilty that with my other 3 I quite happily open the door in the morning and hand them over to other people for really quite a significant part of each day and for these people to take on quite a significant part of their learning and life! I don't ever want to become one of these home educators who insists everyone should be home schooling because I don't believe that. School is definitely the right place for my other 3 children to be but I have been really challenged to look at what it is I really value about my children and what it is I really want to encourage them to be. Do I want them to do well academically for my pride or is it for their well being? Do I want them to cope at school because I want people to think I'm a good parent or is it because I want them to "fit in" or is it because I want them to be happy? Of course I want them to be happy - but how much of parenting is really tied in with me? How much do I insist on with my children because of what it makes me look like rather than what is for their well being and their development? I don't think I am maybe expressing myself very well here but I'm sure you are getting the idea! The joys of blogging!

Anyway, all in all I'm feeling very positive about home schooling just now. I cannot believe we are only 3 weeks away from the end of another term! If we can really get into a "new" way of working it will be so good! I'd better stop now! Well done if you've made it to the end of today's ramble!