A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

The groundwork for the following topics has been laid over the past couple of years. Last year the girls learnt the definition and distinguish between carnivore, herbivore and omnivore, and could place animals into groups, who lived in different environments. However they were not massively interested in the topic and as I could see they were not retaining knowledge beyond the basic facts I shelved the topic. It is so important that children stay interested in a topic, especially if they are autistic. I have observed that forcing a subject will only cause them to completely switch off. So we stepped back and moved on to another topic at the time. Consequently habitats, living things and food chains were on the goal list for this academic year. The girls seem to be full of surprises this year and after unexpectedly having a win with the topic of magnets I let them scroll through their science educational playlist to choose their next topic. They chose habitats! They were really engaged ...

No two days are alike when you home school three children at this amazing age where everything is an adventure and they find joy in any new exploration, whether it is found academically or outside in nature. The subjects may stay the same but the key is to keep the approach spontaneous and in the hands of the children if possible. Over the course of two days, surprising and magical events took place.   In regards to the academic side of things the girls were practicing their mental maths, multiplying by two, five and ten, and adding in tens and ones at breakfast time, and providing alternative additions and subtraction variants to reach the number seven and nine, and then they spent some time on their current maths workbooks. Xander proudly showed his mental maths skills off answering 1+1, 1+2 and 2+2. Multiplying by three has a hit a mental block past the stage of twelve, despite verbal repetition and YouTube songs, so I think I need to get creative and make the three times tabl...

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...

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...

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...