A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

This has been a great weekend: with lots of family time, hours of garden time, and two nature walks. They loved showing off their woodland spoils to their friend next door. There's been an extraordinary number of bubble baths due to them coming in from the garden absolutely filthy from top to toe, and they filled a washing basket just between them! As our learning journey moves forward constantly and weekends are not traditionally recognised, there was plenty of home educating to counterbalance the outdoor adventures.  We woke up our sleepy brains with a good Spanish session which all three children are loving and picking up fast. This morning we had several renditions of Jack Hartmann musical educational videos on colours and alphabet. We sang 1-100, and looked at days of the week for the first time. I also sang a Spanish song about colours to them which I am sure they will learn quickly, if only to stop mum singing it to them. Breakfast time approached and as they sit round the f...

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...

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 ...