A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

We are fortunate the neighbours do not hear the piano or keyboard, however we still have rules set in place. They have free access to the instruments between 9am-5pm.  The children follow their internal clock and by 9am they're sat at their seats, the metronome is going, and the house is full of sound. Refrains of do-re-mi waft throughout the house.  Sophia has made up songs for several years, it is a form of processing for her, she sings about the days events. The piano now gives her a new outlet to explore her emotions and feelings.  They have their first official music lesson on the weekend, here's hoping the teacher is prepared. We have surrounded the children with instruments from the start, a mix of Fisher price and Early learning centre music toys, DIY shakers made from pringle boxes and rice, blown up instruments, as well as real ukuleles, roll up keyboards, free standing keyboards and now an upright piano has joined the family. It was advertised locally free at C...

 What happens in your households at 6am? Snooze buttons, still in the land of nod, maybe a sleepy coffee, or a reluctant breakfast.  The following is a typical example of what occurs in our household before breakfast, if everyone is feeling good, and are having a good mental health day. The lights are blazing here, and all three children are usually up and ready to tackle the day. They get dressed, grab a 'school bag' and pack what they may want to learn the day. Books which are flavour of the day, ipads, pencils and paper, a workbook or two, a writing set. Dinosaurs and stuffed animals finish up the over spilling bags. They then march into the school room or living room to commence the learning.  As they're getting older I'm finding running three different lesson plans at once is easier, bespoke to each child. They're moving at different paces in different subjects.  Kira may greet me in Spanish, bring me the daily board where she tells me the time, date, month, da...

If we are not learning through play, you will find us learning through conversations.  There is an energised dialogue back and forth between us all, rather than a boring monologue by me, droning on about a topic. I cannot envisage a more boring lesson for both myself and the children than me bombarding them with facts.  I take the children by surprise by randomly introducing a topic when they least expect it. I will ask a question which will grab their attention and imagination. Their answer is usually fanciful, incorrect, silly, depending on their mood, but sometimes they can surprise me by giving me a correct answer.  A discussion then has opened and we play it out for as long as the interest remains, sometimes it will end at the conversations. Other times, it will lead on to a youtube fact finding session, or a drawing and writing task.  The topics can vary greatly between continents and habitats, planets and their characteristics, the relationship between trees a...

A key cornerstone for teaching the children involves making learning applicable to their lives, giving them a reason to want to do it.  There's nothing worst than an adult in your life saying you have to do xyz 'because you have too, because I say so'.  This rhetoric is infuriating for any child, but I think especially for neuro diverse children who often won't do anything unless it personally benefits them, is worth while expending energy for, or makes sense enough to leave their own world. If you try to avoid this conversation, you can negate a lot of resentment and meltdowns.  I've also learnt to not to interrupt them when their processing, you may as well be talking to the wall. They're not being rude... They're occupied doing essential control damage and resetting themselves.  There are several pathways I use in encouraging the children to achieve their learning potential. I will make it worth their while with incentives/rewards. Every day they unlock t...

We had exciting pockets of learning throughout the day.  Xander was playing around my feet when I was cooking breakfast, with some animal magnets. I asked him which animal gives us milk, he picked up the cow and said moo. As he showed that he was engaged I asked him questions like, what animals live in the farm, in water, in the jungle, which animal gives us eggs etc until he was bored and wandered off. Learning through play is just a question of building upon layers of information. Children's educational toys are resources which can be used for several years for different purposes. These magnets for example provide the following potential: 1) Identify the animal and their sound.  2) Describe their features, roles, and produce.  3) Where do they live, habitats and continents.  4) Food chains.  5) Drawing them. 6) The topic of magnets  We also had a spell of workbooks and letter writing this afternoon. The tooth fairy magically knew about Sophia's penpals an...

We have been experiencing ridiculously high winds and random rain and hailstorms all week, yesterday's storm was in fact no different from what we've had for the past five days.  The kids have been getting a little stir crazy, and now their trampoline hasn't survived the onslaught.  They were feeling a bit blue, moping around when the, doorbell sounded.... It was a months worth of their flour arriving!  This gave me an idea, a pizza and cake party! Everyone to their stations!  Kira was on chocolate cake duty, mixing the ingredients together.  Sophia was emptying tins of tomatoes, tomato puree together, adding seasonings and herbs to taste under my watchful eye as she's a fan of salt. Xander disappeared under a plume of flour as he and I tackled the pizza base.  Fast forward half an hour, the cake was out of the oven and we had the pizza station set up. Xander and I were prepping the bases, Sophia was armed with a ladle ready with the sauce, and Kira was rea...

All three children can read now to varying degrees. Kira and Xander are self taught/can naturally read, they just read random words from a work uniform and sign post one day. They then picked up books and just knew the words, moreover they have full comprehension what they read too. I take no credit except offering them open access to resources since they were babies. Kira forthrightly reminded me recently that I had not taught her how to read... I own this completely... However I was shocked to realise that she is fully aware of this fact, considering she started reading at the age of three.  Sophia was the classic student and she's my success story with reading. She has accomplished so much, and grown phenomenonally in the last year, really showing that children shine when they're allowed to come to reading when they're ready, rather than forced through social expectation.  I was led by the school method at teaching them to read at the age of four as she was my eldest and...

There are days when home learning magic occurs. We had an extremely productive day, working from 9am-5pm, with a mix of formal and independent learning. This intensity of learning will be child led, I do not introduce formal learning from midday onwards.  Sophia throughout the course of the day completed thirty pages from a range of workbooks, and was learning about the stages of meteors from books and YouTube videos from the Dr Bionics show. I cannot recommend this Youtube educational channel highly enough. It caters for ages 4-12 in all matters science related.  Sophia also was frequently practicing her photography skills with her ipad, and in her breaks chose to either play brain training games or practice her latest gymnastic tricks. She is loving her current reading book of Peter and Jane 10a and is handling it extremely well, considering the level is aimed for 8-10year olds. She also has a focused interest in keeping house, and she practices her life skills in this area ...

 Photography is a common past time for several members of my extended family, including myself, so it is hardly surprising that at least one of my children is showing an interest already within the art form. Sophia has shown a keen interest from an early age, not only wishing to be the subject within photos, but also expressing an interest at being behind the camera. When she was two she voluntarily snapped her first picture from my phone of Daddy and Kira because she thought they looked cute. I had little expectation of the results, assuming it would be out of focus and missing heads etc. I was pleasantly surprised with the result. It remains one of my most treasured and favourite photos ever, which is high praise from someome who currently has 21,000 photos on her phone. She never really stopped snapping away from that moment, asking for my phone on a regular basis to photograph the family. Since receiving her ipad in the last year, her interest has blossomed and she is forever p...