A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

 It was December 2021 when Miss Jo, The Children's Coach contacted me and offered the girls free places in her January zoom class. This was the tutor who had organised and ran the summer fun project which the girls had been nominated and awarded for bravery. The girls absolutely loved her as a teacher and had immediately bonded with her. They wrote her letters and talked about her every day during this project.  I took her up on this very kind and generous offer and the girls had a regular half an hour zoom class every Thursday on the theme of gratitude. The girls were the youngest ones in the class and they handled it really well.  Sophia wrote the classes on the calender, scheduling in the lessons, for the month. Kira took a postcard written to her by Miss Jo, which she had received the previous year, to bed with her every night until the classes took place. She read it to me as her bedtime story.  The first thing Kira said to Miss Jo on class, was to thank her for...

A lovely contact from LinkedIn shared beautiful pictures of an empty birds nest she randomly found on her porch after a return from holiday.  The intricate detail of it made me catch my breath. Nature is remarkable. I commented that I would be sharing this with my girls and was busy planning a topic day on the subject when the lady responded and said she couldn't wait to read about it. We had a lovely learning day as a result. We started the topic with a quiz, with me asking the girls related questions about birds, their babies and nests. They looked at the pictures of the nests and were discussing the materials used.  We watched half a dozen YouTube videos on nests being built, babies hatching, being hand fed and babies learning to fly.  We cuddled on the sofa together and read a book on pigeons together, dug out the farm set and found the dovecot and birds to visualise it. They learnt about them being kept and used as messengers before the age of phones, which blew thei...

I set Sophia, who has only had access to a second hand piano for four months, a few musical tasks.  She initially had to make a gloomy tune, a happy, cheery tune and one with a tone of suspense. She nailed it.  I then asked her to form a story through the music. It was beautiful to watch her create this piece.  She sat and told me the story afterwards which she then wrote up as a handwriting practice.    Sophia drew a story board, starting with the Princess in the Castle with her parents in the main room. She moves to the kitchen and has a snack from her mum the Queen. She then goes out to pick apples from the King's tree and the story plays out with a lot more embellishments and characters than previously imagined. 

What happens in our house on sick days?  The children learn whatever they choose to, I trust them and our home ed system we have in place, which is a learning environment.  - The bag of animals will spill out and Kira will be there automatically talking about habitats/food chains, whilst teaching Xander. - Sophia will be watching Dr Binocs on Youtube, trying to learn how she caught the pesky cold.  -There's drawing materials always at hand, one of them will automatically write get well cards.  - Snuggles with Mummy on the sofa will result in story time, everyone taking a turn to read a page....  - The piano rarely sits silently for more than an hour.  - Dessert making usually takes place, whether it's cake baking, ice cream sundae constructing, or a cool smoothie being blitzed. All of us reminding the current offending sneezer to leave the kitchen.  - We'll play a lot of Minecraft bedrock, I won't even pretend otherwise. However when your child is read...

Are you referring to juggling the daily routine, housework,and teaching multiple children at different ages?  It's a question I get asked a lot, either due to curiosity about our lifestyle, or as a genuine plea for help from struggling parents,,  The key for us is flexibility and fluidity within routine.  Yes.  Welcome to living within an autistic and adhd driven household.  It actually makes sense to us.  Our daily routine evolves and changes to best suit the children where they are currently at, however routines also stay in place.. They just shift and flow, similarly if you imagine a suspended wooden bridge with rope sides. The structure remains intact, however it forever moves. It can be rocked violently at times, like in the scenario we had last year with the transplant. Other times it just sways in the wind, changing with the mental health of the children.  Whenever I have housework (like it ever stops 😂), and the children are feeling clingy and...

How many of you ask your child after a school day,' What did you learn at school today?' Only to receive the reply, ' Nothing' It seems to be quite a standard answer, no matter the age of the child.  It begs the question, how much does this response stem from a complete disinterest or disengagement? Knowing the current response from our children, I'd be very concerned if they were then to go to school and answer me with 'nothing'. I'd be emailing the school every single time.  Leighton works from home and whenever he walks down the stairs from his office, he is immediately surrounded by three children clamouring for his attention.  He occasionally has the chance to get in there first, in order to ask 'so what did you learn today?', and he'll be met with a cacophony of noise in response.  However usually he doesn't get a chance to even ask this question. They'll voluntarily tell him before his feet have left the stairs. He'll have ...

I attended an art exhibition, it cost me 20 pence.  Sophia spent several hours painting her heart out and wanted me to display them. She did so many that not all of them made the cut. The school room floor was a mass of paintings.  For an autistic little girl who struggles with being dirty and messy, it was a massive achievement as paint sticks were involved. She was in a happy, calm headspace and could control her anxiety.  Sophia has processed through art since she could hold a crayon, it is one of her main coping mechanisms, despite her conflicting anxiety. This is why it's been so important for me to work with her to control the fear and place in coping mechanisms for her to be able to use the art as her processing tool.  When her life revolved only around hospitals for several years, the art was very dark and distressing.  However it was her way of dealing with the trauma and as she couldn't express it verbally, I was grateful she had found an outlet to exp...

How did I juggle home education when we were living in a world of hospitals, chemo and transfusions?  I used my village. My support network, my family.  I'm only one person, but together we pulled it off in fine Morris style as usual.  I worked incredibly hard teaching the girls, covering so much ground to prime them for my absence.  I set up their education plan to be carried on with their Dad, Aunty and Grandmothers who were caring for them in my absence (note it took four to replace me 😂).  I was updated daily via video call of their progress. They went out daily and socialised frequently.  They still enjoyed and embraced the full learning life experience despite Mummy not being there, because of our supportive network around us.  It truly makes a massive difference having that support network. The family are regularly updated on the children's progress and will have a chat with them about what they've learnt in the time since they last seen them....

The learning journey could not be halted, despite the food festivities.  It switched paths though, from the academic track, to the life skills path.  The girls have been working on a farm knowledge of a working farm this year. They've watched foaling and calving, milking by hand and by machine, and seen chickens lay eggs via the ever resourceful YouTube.  Naturally we have meat and eggs in the kitchen all the time and academically they knew what they have been eating.  Now was the practical lesson from farm to table just as they've learnt herbs from garden to table last year and will be tracking vegetables from garden to table from their Nana's allotment this summer. They watched YouTube channels devoted to the cooking of the wagyu steak (referred to in my last post) and this last main dish explored in today's post.  A suckling pig.  I had a 4.5lb baby pig in the middle of my table, surrounding by an epic cheese, antipasti, fruit and carbs platter.  No...

Culinary skills and cultural appreciation beats learning multiplication tables any day of the week!  Kira had asked for sushi for her birthday tea. Now we could have brought it in, or had it delivered and she would have loved the meal. We offered her instead a sushi experience, ranging from Japanese to Hawaiian dishes.  We brought butterflied prawns and salmon for Sashimi which arrived on the morning. Leighton prepped a Hawaiian style poke dish, and performed a demo of making sushi rolls, having given the girls a range of ingredients to have their own sushi making experience.  They loved it! It was a talking point for them for days... Despite the many other experiences they had as well, it was not lost in amongst the crowd, which it could easily have been if they just had a tray from Asda. Leighton has had A5 wagyu on his culinary experience bucket list for years. We made the decision to include it as part of this celebration week. However it was not going to be just a st...

How do you meld a week of celebratory food experiences and home education? You place the books aside and practice a variety of life skills.  We indulged in some treat meals, including meal kits of fresh pastas, bacon butties and an epic all English breakfast complete with high tea scones, jam and cream. The children were introduced to a brand new crockery set, and we set up the table as a fine dining experience which was a lovely change for them from their safe plastic fare. It was amazing to see how their deportment during the meals changed when the table was dressed differently. We may or may not have had a few Monica/Chandler moments but there were no breakages 😅 Our date night was a wonderful experience of table service. We had a medley of amazing meats regularly brought round to us, ranging from gammon, lamb, several cuts of steak, chicken, sausage, chicken hearts and pineapple. We dared each other to try the pineapple, we chickened out with the hearts.  The children had...