A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

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...

The majority of parents know exactly what their role is when the alarm goes off in the morning: it’s the school run, which I would imagine is pretty predictable on the whole. In stark contrast, my mornings prior to breakfast time are always different. Learning sessions happen, however it remains fresh and unpredictable day to day, dependant a great deal on the children’s level of concentration, interest and general head space. It may be a very successful, productive morning for one or two, and one may need to process and time alone and have no concentration for lessons. They may switch in at another point in the day and study something totally different from the others. Sophia has been quite occupied in drawing our house for the past month, and she is not content to simply produce the generic form of a house anymore. She’s been through that stage and now only concentrates on exact replicas of our three storey house. She draws it as if you are looking in at an open dollhouse, seeing a...

The girls have had a confusing and scary year, with their little world being turned upside down with the deterioration of their little brother's health. Xander deteriorated rapidly in the last few months leading up to Transplant in June, and was in hospital at least once a week, with a few over night stays. Mummy was all of a sudden very busy and absent and Xander was getting less mobile and needed more care. He would come home having had sometimes eight cannulas in a twelve hour trip away at the hospital. He came home one day with several strange tubes coming out of his chest, and just slept all day after that for a week. Mummy and Xander then disappeared one night and didn’t return for seven weeks. Daddy wasn’t working and was busy looking after them along with Nana and Grannie's help. Xander returned home with no hair, he had changed a great deal, and was still needing regular hospital visits. I noticed one day that Joyful Miss Jo, the Children’s Coach, had posted a lovely...