Making a start · Thursday January 4, 2007 by Ann
Well I’m here-briefly!
I’ll start blogging properly after Tuesday, when we have returned from a long weekend away in Cornwall.
Today has been busy though-maybe after the weekend things will return to normal after the festivities.
My stepson has been staying for the last few days, he came for the New Year celebrations, which pleased us all. He lives in Nottingham and we don’t see him as often as we’d like. One of my stepdaughters also stayed along with her three year old daughter, Nancy, who we are looking after this week. I took my stepson into Birmingham to catch the train home-at the same time meeting Lucy our youngest, who has been away staying at a home educating friend’s house. I am so thrilled that she has begun to be so independant, after leaving school at 8 years old she was assessed as being severely dyslexic and I was told that she would never manage lessons without 1-1 supervsion. Her friend’s mom sorted out train times and today she caught the train from Chester and managed a change at Crewe-all by herself! She was confident she could do it. Thank goodness for mobile phones-I knew she could contact me if she got into difficulties. When I enquired how the journey went she said it had all been fine, although she had been a little puzzled about the spelling of ‘Crewe’ The ‘extra e’ on the end confused her and she wondered if she had got it wrong-so she checked all the boards to see if there was another place spelt something like ‘Crew/Croo/Cru’, when there wasn’t, she realised she was right first time-and therefore didn’t need to phone me. This conversation led us back to an old subject of English spellings and the root of words- a subject she is very interested in. My other two childre are dyslexic, but not as severely so, they learned to read at an earlier age than Lucy and seemed to accept spellings were the way they were told. Lucy was diagnosed as having no ability to recognise shapes of words or the sounds the letters make. She started to read finally at 13-and she questions the spellings of words all the times. She wants to apply logic to them or to at least understand the root of it or why it defies known spelling rules.
The ‘Crewe/Croo’ comment also made me realise anew, just how much harder a dyslexic has to work to make sense of the world.
Anyway on arriving home, Lucy went straight to her laptop and signed into MSN to chat to her friends all over the country-again something I doubted at times that she would ever manage without me! She caught up with another home ed friend ‘Melissa’ last week who she hasn’t been in contact with since Peak camp ‘05, just before this particular friends family moved abroad. Melissa was flabbergasted that this was actually Lucy typing on MSN. Her comment was “Your writing and spelling are so much better-you couldn’t have done this when I saw you last-I wouldn’t have been able to understand you!” but of course, like most 14 year olds Lucy wants to be able to converse with her friends and this has been a huge motivation for her-and a jolly fun way of practising too!
I have got to dash now to go shopping ready to leave in the morning-my cousins are having a 20th anniversary party on Saturday night. We have a special deal at Travelodge-one of their family rooms for £15 a night-thank you to the home educating friend who told us about them. At that price, we decided to take advantage and stay for several nights spending some time in north Cornwall and also visiting Dh’s family in nearby Plymouth. My sister’s family are joining us for 2 nights but of course have to return on Sunday night so their girls are back in time for school-shame!
See you Tuesday!
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It’s changeover time.
Welcome to the Blog Ann :-) I’m looking forward to reading about how home education works for your family.
— june Jan 4, 09:45 pm #
I have a feeling I may be linking to that paragraph about Lucy and the MSN in the near future, since it is a graphic example of how the state cannot know exactly what will work for a child.
No need to get all heavy handed and prescriptive.
Lucy is just there!!! SO BRILLIANT.
— Carlotta Jan 15, 08:07 am #
Hi Anne, thank you for your blog link. I am nobody from that parent forum. I am looking forward to reading this blog. My children don’t have dyslexia or learning difficulties, they were just treated in a bad way by the school, the teacher threatened my son also. BUT, as they went to a Welsh school, they are very behind in the normal range of education. My daughter is almost 11 and can’t even tell the time as I was told not to teach my children anything as it would confuse them. Her spelling is also very bad due to writing in Welsh more than English. They have a lot of catching up to do, but I shall enjoy seeing how you do your homeschooling and hope to learn from this. Nice to meet you.
— Jacqui Jul 21, 03:12 pm #