A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

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...

This particular day started at 4.30am, with Xander marching round the bed chanting the alphabet. I stumbled downstairs and my personal educational journey commenced at this ridiculous time in the morning as I quickly realised that Xanders stomach tube had broken, so his morning meds were hitting the floor rather than his stomach. I replaced the peg end for the first time ever by myself whilst half asleep and it worked! Medicines and feeds could once again commence. Where's the coffee!  The English session consisted of Kira finishing of her Farm animal reading book and reading the entire of Shirley Hughes 'Sally's Secrets', aimed at an aged five reader. We finished reading and discussing the horse project book and watched some show jumping on YouTube. Sophia later wrote a few sentences dictated to her, incorporating a mix of common words, basic punctuation, and words from the 'At', 'It', 'Ow', 'In', 'On' and 'En' families. ...

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...