Travel broadens the Mind! · Saturday May 31, 2008 by Christine
It’s a while since I added to my blog as we whave been away on holiday to Florida for two weeks.
As we intended to spend most of our time in Theme parks I was a little bit concerned as to the Educational benefit Christopher would get from the whole adventure. Boy, how wrong I was!
As each day passed I kept a record of the things we had seen and done and began to realise just how much we were all learning.
We discussed the life styles of the people we saw – the amount of burgers being eaten and cars being driven everywhere and this resulted in debates about Healthy eating and excercise. The sheer volume of paper napkins and cups being used in the Theme parks led to discussions about the importance of protecting our earth and recycling our litter.
We saw citrus groves, yellow school buses, red cardinals (small red birds like chaffinches), found a lizard in the waste paper basket and so many ‘ordinary’ things ’ which we could so easily have overlooked, but, by writing about them I suddenly realised that we were exposing our children to something very important – different cultures and ways of life.
We have even found a wonderful book about the science of roller coasters since we arrived home and Christopher has listened intentlty to scientific theories on gravity, force,inertia all because of his fascination with the rides he had encountered on holiday.
Even just having a swimming pool where the children could relax each day when we returned to our villa meant that the children’s swimming skills advanced dramatically in the two weeks we were away, until Christopher , who previously had been able to swim five strokes under water in the shallow end, was suddenly diving down, out of his depth because he wanted to retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool.
The holiday was a great success and it taught me another very important lesson…namely that there are things to be learned from all aspects of life, even Mickey Mouse!
When the going gets Tough! · Monday April 21, 2008 by Christine
Home schooling isn’t always a bed of roses. Sometimes on days like today you don’t seem to get very far!
Christopher woke up today with a scowl on his face , wrapped himself in his covers and disappeared under the duvet. I’ve learnt on days like this to ignore him and it works very well if I’m in a good mood. Today I wasn’t at my best!
I’ve begun to keep a log of his behaviour , as the days we call his ‘autistic days’ seem to occur in cycles of about 4-6 weeks. I have no scientific basis at all for my theory that he’s often worse when it’s a full moon (sounds a bit cranky I know) but having made a note of them in my diary I noted that full moon was yesterday. I’ve discovered other mother’s have experienced the same thing.
Anyway to get to the point, days when Christopher’s oppositional defiant disorder are at it’s worst are not easy. He needles his siblings, refuses to do anything he doesn’t want to do and moans and groans about virtually everything.
Today he didn’t want his teacher to do his one to one time for an hour. Fortunately I was at work today so I ignored his complaints and left him to his dad . The mistake I made when I got home was to try and make him do his English comprehension. He did do it but only after a lengthy battle of wills. I would have been far better preserving my energy and reading him a story which would have put no demands on him and given us quality time together instead of a war zone.
Having said that however, home education gives me the flexibility to do just that if the time isn’t right to learn a certain thing. We can go on a bike ride instead, visit a museum or just walk on the beach.
School doesn’t allow for bad days, I remember well the times when I would pick up Christopher from school to be collared by a flustered teacher intent on filling me in on how difficult his behaviour had been that day. School becomes a very stressful place when you are continually being ‘caught’ by the teacher at going home time when all you want to do is give your children a hug and take them to the park!
Any way Home education beats school hands down as far as I’m concerned! Tomorrow is another day and we’ll just start again. So at bed time Christopher said ’ I don’t like you shouting mummy, I won’t shout if you don’t shout’ and we shook on it!
For anyone in the same boat I’ve found ‘Educating Oppositional and Defiant Children’ by Philip S. Hall and Nancy D. Hall a very useful book.
Making Friends · Saturday April 12, 2008 by Christine
I’m convinced that one of the reasons mainstream schooling doesn’t work for many children with Aspergers is because they’re being forced together with many other children of the same age in order to ‘socialise’
Even in reception year Christopher would complain that the playground was ‘too noisy’ and of course we didn’t understand him.
That’s where home schooling has a clear advantage. People often seem to think that by home schooling your children they will miss out on socialising but I’ve just looked at our diary for the last week and boy are they wrong!
In spite of his Aspergers Christopher wants to play and have friends, he just doesn’t always get it right! We’ve found that two hours of play is ideal, five hours of people at school is not. Christopher gets to the point where he wants to be on his own and at home he has the time and space to go to his room with a video for half an hour and come back down when he’s ready to talk.
At school he couldn’t get away to wind down when it all got too much for him , the result was that he finally escaped the school premises firstly at the age of 4 and again at 6!
We went to our local National Autistic society support group yesterday. Usually Christopher is the only child there but yesterday there were three babies and a toddler. Christopher froze and wouldn’t acknowledge anyone at first (something I haven’t seen for a while ) Knowing he felt stressed, I sat him next to me, gave him a book to read and ignored him.
He began to take an interest in twin boys of 8 months lying next to us and next thing I knew he was down on his hands and knees playing with them and chatting to their mum! He helped me collect the coffee cups at the end, had an animated discussion with another mum about funding for a playstation for the older boys in the group and announced on the way home that he’d made a new friend. It turned out to be another mum who’d been speaking to him.
In real life we mix with people of all age groups and abilities so why should school be any different?
Christopher fits far more naturally into the key stage 1 year groups at school as emotionally he’s at the same level of those younger than himself. By allowing him to play with the younger ones it has given him some responsability and he will listen to them read, explain how to play certain games and feels accepted and part of the group.
After school football, swimming with the National Autistic society, having small groups of friends round are all helping Christopher to learn how to be socially acceptable in a natural and caring enviroment. Older and younger people are more tolerant, less likely to bully and by building up Christopher’s confidence and self esteem, with careful selection I’m sure that he will be successful in his career choice albeit running his own business, being a sportsman or something which doesn’t involve too much ‘team work’ but we’ll get there!
Flexi schooling at its best! · Thursday April 10, 2008 by Christine
Thomas and Caitlin went back to school this week. It was science week and Christopher went in for the morning as ‘The Lego man ’ came in.
The children spent the morning building a town from lego and when I rang Christopher at lunch time , when he came back home from school, to see how it had gone, he had had a lovely time.
I scoured the charity shops without any luck for some lego but a request on recylce .co.uk (another useful ressource) came up trumps- two sweetie jars full of lego!
The children spent the whole evening building lego buildings and didn’t even mention the play station. Success!
Caitlin brought a chart home from school so we could chart the phases of the moon! She was asleep by the time the moon came out so there was I in my wellies and dressing gown in the garden looking at the moon! What we do in the name of education!
This morning Christopher and I spent an hour designing a paper aeroplane because there was an aeroplane race at school and he was going in after play time until lunch.When I went to pick him up he was delighted he’d come third
We spent the afternoon at home, him playing lego whilst I played a classical music C.D. in the background. Christopher watched a DVD about Beethoven this morning so I played two pieces of music by Beethoven. We also discussed the compilation of classical music and the fact that various instruments represented different sounds eg. cannons, birds, fireworks etc. Christopher was quite happy to listen and surprisingly didn’t complain that the music was old fashioned. We often don’t give children credit for their ability to absorb all sorts of things which are often regarded as ‘above them’ because they are so young.
After school we were back for the afterschool soccer club. Christopher is very sporty and is gradually learning to join in team games . His AS means that he hates to lose but he also has great focus and is very competative and he has asked to take part in the cross country after school next week. A couple of years ago he wouldn’t have joined in in case he didn’t win.
As he gets older his confidence and self esteem is growing as we introduce him to groups and sports that we feel he can deal with.
Instead of the child who was made to feel a failure only two years ago, for us a combination of flexi schooling and a very patient and understanding teacher who has listened to us as parents , has made all the difference to Christopher who now realises that he is a talented sportsman.
Bringing Poetry to Life! · Friday April 4, 2008 by Christine
This week with it being the Easter holidays all three children were at home and I had wanted to take them to Dove Cottage in Grasmere to find out about William Wordsworth.
Our first stop was a guided tour round the tiny cottage, a bit over the heads of my three but we did learn that Wordsworth’s dog was called Pepper, that Wordworth had a visitor called De Quincy (who smoked Opium)- which resulted in a discussion about ‘bad drugs and good drugs) and we saw a tinder box being used and heard how fires were often kept alight twenty four hours a day because they were so difficult to light. The guide also explained about window taxes and that people blocked up their windows to save taxes.
The museum was far more child friendly , with a simple questionnaire for the children to take round the museum and look for things in the glass cases.
I’ve found with museums that there’s often a website you can visit before going on excursions. They’re very useful for highlighting the educational ressources available. and for deciding on which subject you are going to focus . In this case there is a children’s activity room and the highlight of the trip was an hour painting daffodils and making Victoria pegdolls of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, whilst I read some of his simpler poems. The children had a lovely time and had something to take home afterwards.
The great thing about learning in this way is that you can just keep on building up your knowledge as the opportunity arises. The subject won’t just end because we have ‘run out of time’.
The decision to study Wordsworth came about quite coincidentally when I discovered that he’s written a series of sonnets about the Duddon valley, an area in which we often walk, and poetry comes alive when you can point out areas Wordsworth wrote about.
We shall visit Rydal Mount and Wordsworth House in Cockermouth too when we get the opportunity.
Charity shops - A Treasure Trove for Home learning? · Sunday March 30, 2008 by Christine
Reading took the form of reading us 1001 jokes today, or at least that’s what it seemed. Amazing what a Charity shop purchase can achieve. The 1001 Joke book provided, reading practice, use of homophones and figures of speech (very useful if you have Aspergers and can take things literally.)
Education is no longer a separate part of our lives. since we started home educating Christopher it’s become an intergral part of our lifestyle and has effected us all, hence Saturdays are no different from the other days of the week.
Christopher’s condition (Aspergers and oppositional defiant disorder) can make him very difficult to ‘teach’ and we have learned that an autonomouse style of learning, mostly led by his interests is the most effective way for him to learn.
Today he spent an hour with his brother Thomas building towers from dominos. He established that if he built up the towers with dominos at alternate angles (like the breeze blocks on daddy’s pallett) they were stronger than if they all lay the same way. Similarly if he doubled the thickness of the tower it was less likely to fall over when you rolled a tennis ball at it because it had added strength.
They then proceeded to work out how they could make letters of the alphabet from the dominos and spell words.
In the years before home education, board games played little part in our family life as we were all so ‘busy’. Watching the children learn so much from them and socialise together has been a huge suprise and we are constantly looking for games we can use to help them learn, we scour Charity shops whever we go. They are a treasure trove of educational books, games and videos.
A Lesson from Nature! · Friday March 28, 2008 by Christine
One of the most exciting things about Home education is that it is never boring!
The sheep are lambing in our village at the moment and we’ve been watching our local farmer taking them up the lane to the field behind our house.
Thomas went down to the farm on his bike the other day and was invited to come and see the lambs any lunchtime and to bring his friends. Well of course that was it, Caitlin and Christopher wanted to go there and then and were most disgruntled when they had to wait untill dinnertime the next day!
Promptly at 12.00am we set off and knocked on the door of the farm house. Paul showed us round the lambing sheds , introduced us to the lambs and let us all cuddle one!
This year the sheep have been allowed to lamb in the fields and then they’re taken straight down to the lambing sheds for 24 hours with their lambs , as the lambs need to have an injection and have bands placed on their tails. It also takes that time for the sheep and lambs to bond.
If a sheep has three lambs, one can be removed from it’s mother during this time and placed with a singleton sheep otherwise it will need to be manually reared as it’s mother won’t be able to feed it.
The kid’s loved it, especially Christopher ,who demanded a job!
They’ve been back and forth all week to help bottle feed the lambs. What better way to spend the Easter holidays and learn about the lambing season?
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Busy Days, and Diagnosis - Home Ed Rocks! · Thursday March 6, 2008 by Rose
Its been a hectic week or so.
Last Friday we had the first meeting in the hall that two of our group had organised, in our area. It was perfect: space to play indoors and out, places to sit and do crafts, a place to sit and chill – suitable for a wide age range and interest.
I took along the soft play, indoor sports equipment we’ve gathered from Sainsburys and Tescos vouchers in the past year or two, and that was ideal.
Someone set up some craft/painting, which many of the younger kids got involved in.
The big thing, for me anyway, was the attendance of a journalist from one of the broadsheets – yes, finally, home ed has made it to the “serious” papers! They are going to do an indepth feature and the guy is shadowing our group for a while.
He spoke with lots of families, and began to see for himself just how diverse HE is. Amongst the families there were people who have home educated from the start, to those quite new to it. Kids who have never been to school, and kids who did school. Kids with SEN. Kids who were bullied. Families with religious convictions. Families who don’t believe the state should be involved in the education of our children. Families with one, two, or many children.
The usual bag of home educating flavours in other words!
As he is doing this properly, and offering complete anonymity, even the kids were happy to talk with him – and I think he was bowled over by some of them! It was so cool to listen in to them chatting away to him.
One of the kids with Aspergers in the group had a meltdown – poor thing was already having a bad day due to ill health – and I think that too was a statement in itself: both how the kids around him dealt with it, and how the parent – and the other parents – just got on with things.
On Monday some of us went to a farm park – and again, the journalist came. By now he was commenting on how mature, how friendly, how self assured our children all were. He noted also how friendly the parents were, how welcoming. He was surprised that, considering some of us as individual adults hold almost opposing views on some subjects (religion and politics being just 2!), we get on really well, and so do our kids!
It sounds daft, I know, but I felt so darn proud of home educators! We really are quite an amazing bunch – all the more amazing because we are ordinary (if you see what I mean).
Tuesday was our indoor play area day. We had two new families come along, plus a two families who hadn’t been along in ages – including the youngest addition to the group, now 3 months old! It was, therefore, a really good time, with lots of chat – both trivial and serious – and lots of kids running around making friends.
Our family have all been struggling big time with this nasty head cold. JJ is especially having problems because of his asthma. Poor old baby JL is waking every morning with eyes glued shut, and nose crusted over :0(
He is 9 months old today, I can’t you believe it! And to celebrate, he has cut his FIFTH tooth, and number six is probably only a day or so away!
This afternoon we went down to meet with some other teens in the group, who have taken to hanging out together on a regular basis. We didn’t stay for long, as we were late due to taking JJ to the doctors first, just to check that his chest wasn’t infected (it isn’t).
The other big thing was that yesterday we had the “result” of SJ’s diagnosis process.
18 months after we started, yes he is confirmed as being on the spectrum, with Aspergers.
He is “presenting subtly” in the areas of social communication, and imaginative play.
Home ed rocks! I said to the two doctors, that is what two and a half years of “just playing” and learning life skills has done.
I am so, so proud of him, and so extremely glad we took him out when we did. What with the work we’ve done with him on language, and with his Dad teaching him all the top tips for how to talk to people, engage them, etc, as a “saleman”, and with the playing he does every day with his two brothers, my son is able to take part in the world to a degree that, had he stayed in school, he could not have done. In fact, he would have continued to “fall behind”.
I got stroppy at the end of the meeting because one of the doctors said “now, of course you know that for people with Aspergers, it is ESSENTIAL for them to achieve academically”. Basically, she said that they needed to know what they were good at (agreed) and she said that should mean academic work (disagree!). She said that whilst she “heard” what I meant about my priority having not been about “school” work, that obviously wasn’t going to be the best for him.
Huh!
It totally contradicated everything they had just noted about his progress. Again and again I could show how home ed had provided him with all these skills he needed… at his first assessment he’d been distressed, unable to answer, unable to maintain eye contact. Yet a few weeks ago, he took part in another one, relaxed, eye contact much of the time, and “such a confident, kind young person”
That was another thing – him being “kind” and caring for others was non-typical of being an Aspie… yeah I know why they say that but I don’t exactly agree!
Anyway, I put her straight and said that whilst we were continuing to work on his maths, and were going to relearn how to read (as I now understanding why he has huge gaps in his reading ability, as I realise how he WOULD have learned, had we known about the aspergers before, and why the way the school taught him didn’t work), I wasn’t going to make him learn irrelevant subjects he wasn’t interested in, just for the sake of it.
I left shortly after that!
A day by the lake......and how far she has come · Thursday February 28, 2008 by Ann
We had a lovely day yesterday, at a nearby park and activity centre.
In the morning the youngsters went off to do a mountain biking session and then in the afternoon, there was another ‘Introduction to Sailing’ session.
The sun was glorious and it was delightful to be sat by the lake, with a bunch of like minded people, watching the wildlife.
Shrieks and giggles reached us from the boats and we were all sat trying to work out from the sounds, which child was in which boat.
Lucy is so confident out there now, she did her bronze level of sailing course with this organisation last year and all being well (and if enough youngsters like the taster sessions) there will be enough people to run another set of lessons this year and she can do her silver level.
However another family joined us yesterday who really bought it home to me, just how far she has come.
Two lads joined our group last summer, both are dyslexic and dyspraxic and the younger one is as severely dyslexic, as Lucy was at the same age (9)
His mom had gone off to find his older brother and I saw the panic in Stef’s eyes when the children were asked to go and sign in.
So I suggested I went with him and helped him sign in-the relief was so easy to see.
He managed to write most of his first name -missing only one letter and then told me how his surname is pronounced (it is Greek) and I wrote that.
He was then quite happy, to go off and do the mountain biking session.
Later in the day when sailing had finished, he came off the lake with his brother with a grin a mile wide. They had had such a good time again.
But when asked if they would like to do the sailing course in the summer, the worried hunted look came into his eyes and he said “No, no I don’t want to do a course-I just want to keep on having fun like this”
And I remembered
I remembered how Lucy had refused point blank to do the sailing course aged around 9, when her older sister did it (and started what I think will be a life time’s passion for sailing)
When I finally pinned it down, it was because she was still so scared of taking any sort of formal instruction-in case she had to read or write something, or didn’t understand an instruction-”and then everyone would know how stupid I am”
Last year Lucy really ‘got’ reading finally, I have posted before about how this happened in it’s own time and how we allowed her education to run ahead whilst allowing reading and writing to catch up, in it’s own time.
She can read anything now-some days she is slower than others but manages really well overall.
It is only now that she can do that, that she is ready and able to do things like the sailing course.
The damned dyslexia has held her back for so long-or the belief that she left school with, that she was so stupid, did.
And now I see exactly the same thing happening to this young boy.
I told him Lucy wasn’t ready to do it at his age either as she was frightened of having to read or right something. He asked when Lucy did do the first course and I said when she could read properly, aged 14-he said “That’s when I’ll do it then, when I can read as well as Lucy”
Now the Dog is Home Educated Too! · Saturday February 23, 2008 by Abbie
Our dog Arrow is now 14 and a half, and has lost an eye to glaucoma, the other one has a cataract, and she is very deaf. She finds it difficult to know where we are, and if she falls asleep with us close by, but then wakes up and we are not there, she sort of panics and barks for us.
I think she has the same sensory problems as Ram, only his are too sensitive and hers have lost their sensitivity!
We decided that when we went out we would wake her up and let her see us leaving so that she would know we had gone and she could go upstairs and curl up on our bed. So as we prepared to leave for the home ed meeting, I woke her up, said goodbye, and walked to the door.
Unfortunately she had the same idea! She raced us to the door and wouldn’t stay back. We couldn’t pull her inside because her neck is arthritic and we didn’t want to hurt her, so in the end we decided to take her!
I don’t know what she thought when we got to an empty car park. We were first to arrive so we let her wander around and sniff the ‘doggy newspaper.’ When the next family arrived we got out the hockey set (thanks to Tesco school vouchers!) and she settled down to watch. The next family that arrived hadn’t met her before and were intrigued by her lack of eye, failing sight and deafness. It was fascinating to watch the children explore this, and have them run up to me and report how much she responded to them. She is very patient and didn’t seem to mind the kids interacting, or trying to interact with her. It was a great learning experience for them.
As it wasn’t the best of days weather wise, we went inside. The boys were a bit noisy and running around, so Arrow was a bit nervous and decided to lay down behind the legs of the parents! It made me think of Ram when he first came to the home ed meetings and how he used to just want to me near me.
We are working on an animation of an episode of Red Dwarf, using Lego models, so the kids settled down to watch the episode again, while the adults edited the script and made a list of props needed. I was also able to show one of the girls how to do ‘fill the gap’ disk weaving. I had no idea that she was into Japanese things and most modern disk weaving is done in Japan (called Kumihimo) so it was really exciting to be able to show a willing learner how to do it!
All this time Arrow was quietly sleeping by the kitchen door. What it is with dogs and food!
She did finally get restless and wanted to go home about at the same time that Ram had had enough. Will we take her again? I don’t know, but having a sensory impaired dog with me reminded me of how difficult it was for Ram when we first came, and also how difficult it would be for other sensory impaired people to come to a meeting with lots of noisy boys!
