Character building for both!

A whole term has passed now and I've not been blogging at all! I'm so aware of how much I can write about the last term and how much I could bore everyone so will attempt to give a picture of our past term and where we are now. Be prepared for a long one!!!! We've now home schooled for 18 months! I can't actually believe that it has been so long. A couple of folks recently have started asking how we went about home schooling because they are thinking about doing it too. When I reflect on our journey I am quite amazed at our path! If I am being entirely honest if I didn't feel called to do this for S I wouldn't be doing it still! We feel so strongly though that this is the right thing for him that that overides my selfish thoughts to jack it all in! As ever I'm not sure who is learning more! S is clearly learning academically but I feel like I myself have been on a huge journey particularly through this term of what my role here is and how much I need to learn. More on that later. So, this term... Following my op and recovery I am back to good health. S has mixed feelings about this as he knew that that also meant back to more formal home schooling than before. Having said that we have never really returned to quite as formal learning as we did pre op. The jury is still out on whether or not this is a good thing! Rather than describe everything I'll give an overview of our term. Academically we have worked through a stack of work. This term S has almost completed the entire "Year 5" math's workbook! S is naturally quite good with maths. The work is getting harder and so I need to be on the ball and a step ahead of him. He is beginning to see the real practicalities of what we are doing in maths which is good. I wish I'd understood that as early as him! Maths and English are the 2 subjects we try to do daily. I have laid off the pressure of spelling and writing this term as S finds both very stressful. We have continued to read and to work our way through a literacy workbook which in turn I am noticing his spelling begin to pick up and likewise when he makes the effort the little writing he has done has improved. English is going to be a tricky area and with S's various language difficulties I constantly worry that I am not doing things right with him. His memory difficulties really do not help with either maths or english as I can feel that I've taught a concept, mastered it and we can move on and then when we revisit it another time it can be as if we've never done it at all! S is really enjoying being read to. We have read through a lot of books together and he managed to read a whole book to me without paired reading which was fantastic. He tires quickly and I have become so aware of this this term. My sister (an English teacher) pointed out his tiredness and the mistakes that came with the tiredness so I'm taking the foot off the gas a bit and reading to him when he's done a bit. I still love it when he giggles his way through a story. To make a book come alive is such a treat - particularly when I know it is such a struggle for him to understand what we are reading. Lego has become a big part of our week. Through Lego "Build to Express" and other Lego Education we now have specific tasks to build and discuss together, then film and share with our home school friends over "Edmodo" - an educational social networking site. S loves this! It combines technology with lego - 2 of his favourite things. It can easily go off task so I need to stick with him but can see huge potential here! Other than that we have done lots more! We looked at food & nutrition and plants & life cycles in topic work and with his speech therapist he has studied China which he loved! We have also introduced "Inductive Bible Study" to our week. I think in truth I am more excited about this than S but have been so impressed at the material and the way that S can understand the Bible with really very little effort! The material we use has covered pronouns, context, questionning and all sorts of grammar concepts alongside real challenges of the big questions of life. Socially things have not been great! S would quite happily live in the house all day every day and not leave! As a family he is happy to go out but more and more he did begin to withdraw even from his siblings which was a concern. Thankfully this has improved over the past couple of weeks and I actually need to remember how tired he gets. The social isolation I find the hardest thing to deal with in home education. It has highlighted to me how different S and I are in our characters. Whilst I do need time to switch off and to be on my own I thrive by being busy and being with people. S thrives by being on his own! Not so compatible!! I think this term I have tended to overcompensate my need to be busy and be with people and have gone into overdrive which is not ideal either! The more the term has gone on the more I've been aware that the issues are more with me than with S! He's content, happy, secure and learning! What more could I want? He's beginning to want to learn how to deal with things he finds hard and is beginning to verbalise things that he finds difficult. We are beginning to be able to pre-empt frustrations and try to deal with them ahead of the reality. That is great! I need though to be a diligent teacher and mum and settle! I think ultimately though being with my children 24/7 is taking a toll and we haven't yet struck the correct balance of time out for me! I feel really quite guilty if I am not with family or being "productive" and doing some sort of task! I think both of us would benefit so much more if we could work out some way of having a semi regular time out from each other and then appreciate each other so much more. But, the reality is we live in a busy house, with busy lives, with an awful lot going on just now! My husband is very busy and I don't actually feel I want to pile any more onto him as I couldn't ask for a more supportive, loving husband! Everybody lives busy lives these days and the daily juggle of all that goes on is true for everyone - so I feel that my aim has to be to pray that this calling me become more second nature and to be more peaceful! In our own family life just now there are additional stresses going on and I am aware how much they are affecting me and when you are home educating a child it is very hard for that not to affect what goes on there. I am constantly helped by my home ed friends, who do things very differently from me and who are great at keeping me on track and helping me not to be beating myself with a stick about what I'm not doing and instead seeing what we are doing together. With a mix of kids at school though and kids at home it is very easy to worry that you are short changing your child! So that's our term. I hope I'm not overstepping the blogging purpose here but i want to be honest. For others starting the journey on home schooling I think it is important to see the highs and the lows. This term has been a struggle but life is a journey and we will move on! Next term S has asked to learn how a computer is built and made. When I told him I have no ideas he said, "Well mum, we can learn together!" Surely that is a response I could only have dreamt of this time last year! So, the books are ordered and have arrived and we're going to learn together and actually I'm quite excited! With the possible coming of spring/summer and the sunshine I'm optimistic and looking forward to another term! Thanks for sticking with me. It's been a big encouragement to have folks asking after the blog and to know that our Christian friends are praying for us means so much that a mere thank you does not come close to! I promise I will try to be more regular at blog updates!

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!

Report Card Day!

It's parents evening next week for my other 3 children. This inevitably led onto some banter with the kids about S's parents evening and what sort of report he would get! Ironically a few days later I got a phone call from the council asking me to submit a report on our first full year of home school. I think this is an annual thing but from chat amongst the home school mums different council folks have taken different views, some taking this very seriously and some leaving us to our own devices. To be honest I'd been dreading this a bit wondering just how much detail I needed to go into but in the end it was fine. I wrote it in an hour today and actually was quite amazed to think back over the year! This week has been a big week for me! After 7 years I have decided to abandon facebook! There are loads of reasons for this. The trigger in the end was a wee privacy scare which I'm not actually sure had much basis to it but was enough to tip me over. I have had several conversations for and against Facebook recently all of which have made me really think about its value! I love it and had very many fruitful conversations through it with folks privately (although that was the privacy scare called into question this week!). However, I am addicted to it! I do check it frequently through the day and it is never far away! Life tends to be thought of in terms of facebook statuses and it is very quick to get in the habit of looking someone up and finding out all about them without actually speaking to the people themselves! So, I decided that enough was enough and I'm virtually finished deleting everything on my account to prevent me from simply reactivating my account! I think I'm going to regret it but I think it will be good for me! The upshot is though I think most folks who read this blog do so through facebook so think I've not helped folks here!! Oh well! Schooling in the past week has gone ok. S has been very controlling in how we do things and his motivation has certainly driven things which I find so frustrating! My twins decided to have a day off on Monday and well and truly pulled the wool over their dad and my eyes! They were very unwell until 9:30am when a miraculous recovery took place! They were going to have a ball! Or so they thought. I was very annoyed with them. Not only does it waste their teacher's time but also wastes S's time as he finds it so difficult to concentrate when they are having a ball! So, Monday was a bit of a write off! The rest of the week has been fine. Following a couple of weeks of lots of different things going on I had decided that this was going to be quite a stable week without too many distractions. I think S really did need this. He has settled right back down after quite a hyper time. I'm going slightly stir crazy but can cope with this! We only have one week left until the October break so I think we can afford to take the foot off the gas a bit and be less structured again next week!

Another wee reality check!

The end of term is racing towards us! I am amazed at how quickly this term has gone passed and am amazed at how much learning we have actually done! This week alone we have tackled "equivalent fractions", "fractions of groups" and introduced decimals. That might sound like pretty mundane stuff but from someone who was told throughout secondary school that I "struggled to grasp the basics" I feel not only a sense of acheivement that S has grasped the topics but that I have been able to teach them! Actually, dare I admit it I am really enjoying teaching maths! For probably the first time in my life I am seeing how much all the topics in maths link together and how much it all makes sense! In the midst of all this though there has definitely been a build up which led to a reality check today. I have become slightly complacent over the past couple of weeks with the new calmness at home and the change of temperature. With S cooperating so much more it has been a bit too easy to drift through the day working. S has actually been doing more work than he was before and has learnt a lot but I have inadvertantly allowed him to take the reins a bit too much in deciding when we do things! I realised this today when he point blank refused to do his independent learning at the time I requested. It was a stark reminder all of a sudden of the attitude that I battled with for a lot of last year and one that I don't want us to slip back into! This has been my fault though and not S's. I had to put my foot down and instead of a more lazy afternoon that we normally have we worked all afternoon! This might sound very control freakish of me but it is so important for S. His behaviour was getting to the silly loopy stage which for S is the start of a spiral when he starts to get himself into a lot of trouble and we reach meltdown! He so much needs to have structure and I have to remember that if given an inch he takes a mile and we were heading down that road. I do think I got him back on track. Tomorrow will be another new experience for S. We are getting together with the other home ed families for "Roald Dahl book day". All the kids are to dress up as characters from Dahl's books and we are selling baking to raise funds for children with brain injuries (I think!). This will all be well and truly out of S's comfort zone. It is in a different hall from normal (although thankfully S knows the hall we are going to very well), the activities will be totally different from what we normally do together, and it's another day out of routine! I think that after tomorrow I need to be careful in the following two weeks to try to return to a fairly "safe" routine and limit the extra things that I've been doing. Whilst I have so much enjoyed getting out and about more and doing other things I need to have a balance!

I wonder who's learning the most?

I am amazed! 4 weeks of our home school term have flown past! It is our long September weekend here and we are racing on towards the October holidays already! This term so far is going really well on the whole. S's bank is working brilliantly! It has been a great incentive for S and so far he has earned more than 90p each week which is far more than I expected he would manage. It has given us both a very visual record of how the week goes. EVERY week he has earned his lowest amount on the Monday and his highest on the Wednesday. It has very clearly shown us how long it takes him to settle into the week and then again how much it flags by Friday! It also though has given S a visual way to see that some behaviours are not acceptable and that at the same time when he really puts his mind to something and works really hard his efforts can literally pay! I think for me the biggest breakthrough so far this term is our new "independent learning"(IL) slot. I really did wonder if this was going to be a step too far to expect him to do this every day when he is only 9 but really functionning at a younger lever. However, he has taken to it straight away! As long as I am careful not to introduce any new concepts to the work and it is all pure revision he is working away well. In fact the other day was amazing. I'd asked him to do 30 mental maths questions instead of 15 as we were going to be busy the following day at "IL" time, He went off and did 255!! He was so motivated and got a score of 251! Now, the control freak part of me was finding this a real test as I'd spent 6 hours the previous two nights planning the month's work! By S doing all of this he had basically used up 2 and a bit weeks of my mental maths planning! But it was a real lesson for me to let him run with it! What harm was he going to do by being excited to do his maths?? It was lovely! He not only did that but then completed the IL work on times tables and spelling! That was an easy extra 2p reward! Another breakthrough for me has been his continued enjoyment in reading. This term I am introducing more formally a time where I read to him. Last term we tried reading "War Horse" together but it was too hard for him. This term we are reading together "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory". It's early days but he is so much enjoying it! Today we came across a couple of idioms, one being "pulling her leg" and had great fun learning what exactly that meant. I thought he would find this book quite boring as we have watched the film endless times as it is one of his sister's favourite films. However, he has memory difficulties and his attention to detail is obviously not great watching the films as it is all as if it is brand new when he hears it read! It is a joy to read to him! We started the term reading a Horrid Henry book which he loved and even got his granny to read the funniest chapter to him for the second time. Alongside this we also have our official "reading books" which he either reads to me or we do paired reading with. This year he is either stopping to ask me to explain things or is finding the humour funny, both of which he has never done before. It is so good! If nothing else, this term I think is beginning to give him a new enjoyment of books which hopefully will be like a seed that I can water for him and we can grow it together! Language work I definitely find more of a challenge! I did get help from our local headteacher a couple of weeks ago as I find it really hard to guage if I am getting anywhere with him. I still am feeling a bit wobbly about that! Basic grammar I'm not so worried about but teaching him how to write stories and comprehension I'm not so sure about!! Having said all that we have had some great discussions on the books we are reading together and on the Solar System. I think I need to really work on my ability to think out of the box! Comprehension is happening in a very informal way throughout all our learning! Steven has very much taken to the concept of "Together Time" as oppose to his IL time and we have had good discussions together - again a new thing this term. In the midst of all this I attended my first seminar on helping autistic children. It was on anger management and was brilliant. For me it was such a good day to take time out and just think about the issues that S is faced with and we are faced with every day! Over the past month I have encountered all sorts of comments and opinions about life with S (which in itself is amazing as I don't actually get out and about very much!!). I am getting quite scunnered with folks constantly telling me that the things S struggles with are just normal struggles for all children - or that my children are just not well behaved. Or, I've been told to get S "back to reality". These comments actually hurt a lot! As a parent of a child on the autistic spectrum I am constantly berating myself for not pre-empting a situation or parenting him "properly". I constantly am in a situation where I can see S really not coping and then losing the plot and blaming myself for not handling it better. I am watching a child who finds the most simple of everyday tasks a munro to climb and for whom even flushing the toilet is a painful sensory experience. I think folks seem to forget I have 3 other children who are "normal" and who I am parenting and I can see quite clearly that S is finding things that bit harder. When the door is closed at the end of the day and we are on our own most of the folks who make the comments have absolutely no idea what daily life is like! We have altered just about everything we do every day because of S, in ways that even we forget now! We opt out of many things because we know of the stress that is involved if we do certain things. However, out of all my moans and groans above we are not parenting for the benefit of others and for a parenting award badge. We are parenting because God has given us 4 precious bundles to look after and to do our best for. S is an entirely different child from this time last year. The stressed child we took from school last October is unrecognisable now. There is a calmness and a contentment about S that is hard to put into words and whilst he might not be experiencing "reality" which parent in their right mind could put him back into a situation that caused him so much stress? The seminar I went to was so good for me to hear just why S finds things so tricky and to hear that it is not my parenting that has gone wrong and not to feel so guilty. It was so good to get positive help and ideas (that's a whole other blog in itself!!) and I am really excited to start implementing them. Maybe I've annoyed people by writing all that is above! Maybe I'm overstepping the mark by making these feelings so public! Maybe I'm overstepping the purpose of this blog. However, I don't think I'm alone in feeling like I do as a parent of a child on the spectrum and I hope that the blog does help folks to understand a wee bit more of what life can hold. Anyway, I'm rambling now so will sign off. So much more to say from the month - lego therapy, friends, ICT, and many more but maybe I'll get more chance another day...

We're Back! Let the term commence...

Believe it or not this is the third time I have started to write this blog entry! I have so much to write I get so carried away and then something interrupts my train of thought and each time I have deleted the whole lot! So, this time I am going to publish the post whatever happens! So, term has begun! I was so apprehensive about term starting! This was the first long holiday S and I had had together from home schooling and I had no idea how it was going to go when we returned. Many home educating families don't stop for the holidays and I can understand why that is but S and I so much needed to have a holiday and it really did both of us so much good! As the beginning of term approached I started to feel really quite nervous and became a bit fragile emotionally. Having had the children off all summer, whilst it really was a fantastic summer, I hadn't had 2 minutes to sit and get my head together about the term ahead. We moved house right at the beginning of the summer and the moving has been so much more work than when we moved into the rental house. The first week back was really just me bluffing to fill time! Of course we did totally valid activities - like writing a report on school holidays and some revision maths and spelling activities but really I was trying to buy time. Mum and dad came to the rescue and offered to take S for 2 nights to give me time to plan. It was fantastic and so much appreciated. I worked so so hard but got my head back into teaching mode and had a good think and got so much sorted for S. It has paid off!! We have had a fantastic first week and a half back to home school! For really the first time since we started not only are we learning a lot but I can honestly say we are both enjoying our time together. I have made some pretty big changes to our routine as if this is going to have a long term future certain things need to be established and I am realising how important it is to begin to teach S already the skills he needs to work independently. So what are our changes: 1. Independent Learning: Each day now begins with independent learning. During the first hour of home schooling S has to complete a mental maths activity, another maths activity and a spelling activity. Nothing will be complicated at this slot and mostly it will be revision. The tasks are written on a small whiteboard I got us and he has to find the right pages and complete the work by 10 o'clock. Whatever time he has once he's finished is his up until 10 o'clock when we start "together time". This morning he chose to start at ten to 9 and was finished by 9! On other days it has taken him longer but the point is that he is doing this all by himself. 2. Together time: This is the main teaching time of the day when I will sit with him and work through the English and Maths for the day which includes reading, handwriting, grammar etc. At times here I will set him tasks and then disappear to let him finish them. This time goes on until lunch time and once English and Maths are finished we move onto topic work. This term we are looking at the Solar System which he is loving already. Today we started making properly a model of the solar system which glows in the dark! 3. S's Bank: This is probably the biggest change for S. For many many reasons I couldn't face going into another term of lack of co-operation. The day before S went to mum and dad's was an incredibly uncooperative day and I didn't cope well at all! I am facing an op in a couple of months which will floor me for a few weeks and am so aware that S needs to start to co-operate and to work with me and not against me for home schooling to work at all this year! So, major changes had to take place! Now we have 3 home school rules above the desk: 1. No moaning at all 2. Try your BEST not your worst or a little bit! 3. No playing until ALL the task cards are finished. Here's the new bit! (which I got from a website!!!) Every day S starts the day with 20p. Every time a rule is broken (so every time he moans or he doesn't bother trying and does scrappy work) he loses 1p. If he does fantastic work then he can earn pennies. At the end of each day whatever money he has earned he banks. At the end of term we will have a treat up to the value of the money he has banked. I reckoned that each term is about £8. I could easily go out for a coffee and spend £8 and so thought it was worth a try. It is AMAZING!! One day he did moan about the money but when I pointed out no-one else I knew earned money by going to school he seemed to accept that and immediately get on with things. The moaning has gone from extreme to almost non-existant virtually overnight! Part of S's diagnosis on the spectrum means that he can be very very controlling. I'm hoping that S's Bank shows him that he can channel this controlling element of his character into a positive and not a negative. So far the lowest he has gone is 15p whereas today he earned 23p by working so hard! I so much hope this works for a long time! He has really enjoyed his learning. Where he does need help is learning to express when he is stuck! His language difficulties are definitely impacting his learning in a much more evident way. His maths is going from strength to strength. Last week we learnt the 7x table. In the car one day afterwards he reeled off quite happily the 8x, 9x, 11x and 12x table that he had worked out himself! His mental arithmetic is much much better than it was this time last year. His reading is really quite good but his understanding is very poor. His grasp of vocabulary is still so sketchy and this is causing him to misunderstand questions in all his subjects. Reading comprehension is a nightmare for him naturally. His lowest "bank" day last week was a reading comprehension day! It is fascinating for me to look at the week and see how clearly the difficult subjects impact on him as a whole. I need to learn too... So, all in all a very very positive start and an exciting start. This term and next hold a lot of challenges for us mainly with me being out of action but the signs are very good and I'm hoping that with the right amount of prep and planning things will go fairly smoothly! So, a long post again, but actually I think that's the main things I needed to say so will publish now before I'm distracted!! More soon...