A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

If you go down to the steps today, you're in for a big surprise.....Around the corner from our house lies a short flight of steps which leads us down to the local canal walk and to the children it's like stepping into a magical world. We step on to the path and there's two choices, shall we travel to the left or the right of the path, as both directions promise different adventures.  Let's initially turn to the left and picture the following scene: a long winding path following the canal which is a beautiful stretch of water, home to a number of ducks. The sides are adorned with an abundance of blackberry bushes, the black fruit gleaming in the sun tempting us for an impromptu snack. The girls can recognise them now , but they always check with us first, it's our first year of foraging with them. We discovered two bushes of what looked like black currants today, one looked unsafe with green pus oozing out of the berry when it was squeezed, and one had familiar red j...

The baffling disappearance of the Internet is annoying to most of us, but to young autistic children it can lead to a meltdown or act as a trigger to them heading towards a bad headspace. It is incomprehensible to them how their shows can be there one minute and gone the next, replaced with the never ending circle of doom, which instills a brief moment of panic in me as I tentatively await the fallout. This morning however I had a welcome reprieve from the above, as I was the first one up and I had busily prepared a morning of online learning for them. I then attempted to connect with YouTube....to be met with a black screen and my lesson plan in tatters. No problem, I threw the remote in the drawer and made a dash to the school room.  The children emerged from their rooms and tumbled down the stairs in quick succession and greeted me with 'What we doing today mum?', 'Can I have free tv mum?', 'A for Adley Mammy!!!'. Once the cacophony had died down I put my cun...

This particular day started at 4.30am, with Xander marching round the bed chanting the alphabet. I stumbled downstairs and my personal educational journey commenced at this ridiculous time in the morning as I quickly realised that Xanders stomach tube had broken, so his morning meds were hitting the floor rather than his stomach. I replaced the peg end for the first time ever by myself whilst half asleep and it worked! Medicines and feeds could once again commence. Where's the coffee!  The English session consisted of Kira finishing of her Farm animal reading book and reading the entire of Shirley Hughes 'Sally's Secrets', aimed at an aged five reader. We finished reading and discussing the horse project book and watched some show jumping on YouTube. Sophia later wrote a few sentences dictated to her, incorporating a mix of common words, basic punctuation, and words from the 'At', 'It', 'Ow', 'In', 'On' and 'En' families. ...

Greetings dear readers, I cannot recommend learning spelling via the word family method enough, it is really working well with Sophia who struggles with retaining spellings more than a few moments after she's told you. I dictated a couple of sentences to her using a mix of common words and words from the 'At', 'Ow' and 'It' families, as well as basic punctuation. She could use the tools she's learnt so far with a mix of phonics and word families to write it out for me, just needing the odd reminder on spacing. She was so excited when she saw the finished article and proudly read it back to me.  They wanted educational play lists on then, and Spanish was the consensus. Jack Hartmann has a really good, fun, catchy video on Spanish Colours which is a family favourite. Xander recognised the language and started telling us 1-7 in Spanish unexpectedly, toddlers are such sponges, they really do take in far more from their surroundings then we realise. He also r...

There are times currently when my son has to spend prelonged periods of time in hospital, and my previous post discussed how I continue to teach him through illness and in a different environment than his normal one at home. This second part of the topic will cover how the learning journey continued going forward at home for the girls when I was not with them for days/weeks on end.  There are several reasons why I teach all year round, rather than following more traditional set holiday times throughout the year which falls in line with schools. One important reason however is the anticipation of long spells of illness within our family. It is not just be frequent hospital visits or long hospital stays, which can interrupt our learning journey, but also when my children fall ill even with the simplest cold they are made incredibly poorly and subsequently it can take far longer for them to recover than normal, and the resulting work flow is put on hold until status quo resumed once m...

There are times currently when my three year old has to spend prelonged periods of time in hospital. This two part blog post covers how we balance moving the learning experience outside the family routine for Xander and how it continues going forward at home for the girls when their regular teacher is gone for days/weeks on end.  We have just faced a prelonged separation within our family, whereby Xander and I were in isolation in hospital for seven weeks, and since then we have had a further two week stay. The easy solution would be to forget about teaching in this situation, he was in grave danger of dying, and enduring chemo and total body radiation. Likewise the girls were dealing with the trauma of losing their mum and brother for a long period of time. However as a family we believed that maintaining normality would be the best way for us all to get through this tough time. He was too young to have the official teaching support which is in place for school aged children, so I...

There will be plenty of families like us facing the battle and balance of keeping up schooling whilst dealing with long term health problems which involve repeat visits/stays in hospital. Two of my children require frequent hospital attention and the challenge then arises to make sure their education does not get forgotten in the world of needles, operations and doctors.  Over the years I have used the car as a mobile teaching portal. We are in there for an hour and a half at least every hospital visit, and playing fun games helps settle the nerves and helps the time pass for us all.  Car/bus/train games are surprisingly educational once you start getting into the spirit of them. They provide a moving landscape full of pockets of information across all topics. 'I spy with my little eye' is a classic which teaches young children vocabulary linking the alphabet and phonics, teaching observational and concentration skills.  Science can be covered in the weather report, and t...

Sophia greeted me at 6.30am with, "What fun things are we going to do today?", followed up by Kira answering, "Let's do horses". I didn't even have to open my mouth before they had decided in what order to start the day. That was fine by me, decision making skills being exercised before my brain had caught up on what day, month, year we are in. We cracked on straight away after Xanders's first meds of the day. We started with the information book on horses, then viewed some horses and their roles on YouTube, followed up by an informative video on horses presented by the children's presenter Blippi, who is a great, fun presenter for this age group.  Sophia was delighted to see that one of her favourite child YouTubers, Adley (from A for Adley), also had some videos on the topic of horses, so they were eagerly watched. In Sophias mind she has scored a victory having 'free tv' before midday. It was an interesting video to be honest with a young ...

On Sundays we have a review day on the past week, and tie up any loose ends ready for the new week ahead. It's a lot more slower paced, more arts and crafts and garden time, family cooking sessions and walks.  Sophia wrote out her 'At' family spellings from memory, and she recognised the alphabet method used to make sure she hadn't missed any. She was so proud of herself and then wrote the word 'cow' for me. She asked if there were any other words like cow she could learn.... Next weeks spellings will be the 'Ow' family. This method is working for both girls which is amazing. There's a new lease of life in our spelling sessions.  I baked cupcakes whilst they had a freshly made banana milkshake, porridge and eggs, which the girls got very excited about. We have to make freshly baked goods daily and cook fresh food every meal for Xander currently due to the medication he's on until January. He can only eat items that have been cooked within 24hrs, ...

The children wanted to watch exercise videos on YouTube from 6am, note that I said watch.... we were all cuddled on the sofa under blankets together just watching the entertaining footage for the first few.  Eventually the girls emerged and completed a few different platform game run throughs, where they run, zig zag, jump and crouch to mimic what's happening on screen. They particularly love running along a game play through with Ryan Worlds - Tag with Ryan (which is just something they came up with, it's not an exercise one). Ryan's World does have several official exercise videos with Ryan and mum which are firm favourites too.  We then switched to this years educationplaylistt. They sang gustily along with Jack Hartmann's 'Spanish colours' several times and then move on to maths. They were shouting out the answers to videos on comparing numbers, adding and subtraction, and the concept of money. They sang along to multiples of two and five, and number pairs f...

  I am relieved to report that nothing disastrous has occurred during this traditionally superstitious day. We also had a lie in till 6am, which really makes all the difference.  The girls were hot off the press this morning, straight after their pre breakfast snack of milk and salmon, they were clamouring to continue the farm project. Kira wanted to re watch the video on hay making, and Sophia was fascinated to watch the process of milking a cow. Both girls preferred seeing hand milking by a farmers wife and asked a lot of questions. The milking machine scared them a little, they were not convinced it wouldn't upset the cows. Sophia was also keen to see an angry bull in action, and Kira was fascinated to learn that there is an even more powerful breed than the bull...oxen.  We are hurtling through this first book, it will be finished by Sunday, which lines up nicely to start book two next week. I am reviewing daily with them and they are eagerly retaining the information...

The day started at 5am and as I stumbled down the stairs after an energetic Xander, the girls met me with their first weird and wonderful questions of the day.  Sophia had found a sprig of rosemary lying around that Dad had found foraging and wanted to know all about the herb. I made my way down to the kitchen to sort out the first of the many meds for Xander, Kira sought me out and we had an in depth conversation about how snakes kill their prey.  Ever since I first had Sophia I remember being warned 'just wait till you reach the questions stage', but I personally love it and take them in my stride, answering them around whatever I happen to be doing at the time. I really recommend you to embrace this question phase, they're not an annoyance, but an opportunity for a quick five minute snapshot lesson, which can sometimes extend into an entire topic. Try and analyse their questions as they can give you insight into the children's interests, and inspire full projects.  T...

Hello everyone, we started the first official day in our learning journey. I implemented my new plan to tackle spelling by introducing the ‘At' family.  As I sat down with the girls they automatically reached for paper, fair enough it was clearly going to be a spelling and handwriting practice combo session. The girls quickly caught on to the pattern and spelt nine words easily. Sophia then made a sentence using several ‘At' words. She found the session really easy once she could apply the logic. We also started our ‘On the farm’ project which will hopefully continue all year through. I am following a set of DeAgostini ‘My animal family' books, which corresponds to a farm set collection. This week’s book was on cows.  The girls were very enthusiastic, I started by reading the first two pages of the book to them whilst they were holding the cows from the farm set. They then watched YouTube videos which reflected what we had read and talked about. Sophia fell in love with a n...

In our experience, our autistic children need flexibility within a routine, and that took a couple of years to reach the right balance. Currently the following works for them and the entire family.  The children wake naturally between 5-6am in summer time and 4.30-5am in winter. They have their morning milk and fruit and get dressed, and we are ready for the day. We learn till breakfast time at 7am (often during as well). We have another learning session until 9am and then it's garden time, where I'm chasing after them madly with hats and suncream.  Snacks follow at 11am, freshly made fruit, chocolate milk smoothies/milkshakes with homemade pancakes. Learning time commences until midday, and then it's free time/free tv time for the children until 4.30, broken up with dinner time. Free time activities include tv, ipad, roleplay, arts and crafts, puzzles, Lego, Playdoh, baking, or more garden time if they request it. This is my main time for housework, cooking and writing. ...