A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

It was 8am when the theme was chosen for the day. Cakes.  Kira helped me measure out the ingredients, mixed the batter and spooned it into cases, having correctly answered a quiz on its ingredients and making process, from mixing the batter to icing the finished product.  Later in the afternoon we had an messy hour decorating the cupcakes with icing and food colouring whilst we chatted about buying and selling the cakes, practicing maths skills with money and change.  Interesting fact: Kira cannot do maths after eating icing. Sophia however remained very focused throughout the entire lesson. They finished the topic by drawing their best dessert and writing a short piece on cakes. 

Sophia chose to study about markets one day and the other two warmed up to the topic over the course of the day. We played and worked all day on this theme, beginning with all taking it in turns to read the designated book on the farmers market.  We had a morning of role play, where we set up a traditional market stall initially with a full range of farm produce set out on the table, courtesy of farmer Sophia, who also brought a cow to market, played magnificently by Kira who dressed the part. Alexander joined in, and a food market quickly merged with the farmers market.as he busily set up a pizza stall, and was preparing orders for everyone. Active role play commenced and hours flew by.  Along came a grumpy old lady (played magnificently by yours truly), very hard of hearing, who asked the farmer questions about everything under the sun about the produce and the cow who was inaccurately sat eating potato peeling crisps, mooing away on occasion.  This lady was very bad at...

A great way to engage a child is to ask them what do they want to learn about and basically make the leaning day up around their answer, incorporating the theme in amongst the transferable skills.  Sophia loved this idea and three days flew by with her choosing her theme in the morning and us working throughout the day on her chosen topic.  Sophia was so immersed in the learning environment she actually didn't realise she was learning. After a few intense learning days she asked me when she was going to stop playing around and get back to school lessons. She was astonished to recap and realise she has been practicing all her skills every single day whilst having a massive amount of fun.  Kira joined in sporadically with a few of the activities however it became obvious that our empirical little girl did not gain as much educational information in this format as her more creative sister. This is fair enough.  During these few days I did extra work with Kira one in one...

  'I'm not hungry for food Mummy, I'm hungry for learning'. This was uttered by my six year old as she laid curled up in my lap under a blanket.  Rewind six weeks previous and she had enjoyed a lovely week full of exciting social events, the likes she had not experienced since before the pandemic.  The children had visited local playgrounds, soft plays, trampoline bounce parks, arcades and the beach, rebounding with family and making new friends with the children from the local area. They had an amazing week.  This was to result in five weeks of severe illness for all the children and I did not feel brilliant either, thus Sophia lying in my arms as she was at this moment.  She was left incredibly tired by this illness, which continually tested negative for covid, despite having all of the current symptoms. Nevertheless she was still keen to work.  She had been watching YouTube food channels with her Dad, learning about cuts of meat, cooking techniques and g...

There are days when this is the only apt description of our home ed experience.  Join me as I recall a classic example.  To an outsider looking in, the scene in our kitchen this morning looked liked absolute chaos.  Three children in fancy dress were squealing, running round the kitchen, falling on the floor laughing, while I was tidying down the kitchen after breakfast....  They were playing 'Simon Says', which had initially kickstarted the breakfast quiz. Simon says, 'What is 9-3?', Xander unexpectedly answered first.  You've got to love Simon to help you out when your children are listlessly spreading themselves out across the table with their heads down, not wishing to engage in a curriculum knowledge quiz.  A successful quiz completed, the children were mentally warmed up and ready to go.  We went on to have a revision lesson on identifying materials for the girls and first time round for Xander, who picked it up very quickly.  Simon says fin...

 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...