The beginning of the month. · Monday March 12, 2007 by Lily
Monday generally starts off with a bit of planning for the evening. Rupert has started a French course in Manchester, 35 miles away, and that involves looking up train times for the 6pm start. Today, he wanted to indulge his passion for buses by taking a detour and stopping off en route to look at the fleet at Warrington; that involved internet research and the acquisition of lots of prior knowledge. It’s not a hobby that would have been very popular in school, but it’s one he indulges in freely within the confines of home education. He has dozens of fleet books and maps of towns to refer to, he subscribes to bus magazines, follows the news and issues relating to environmentally friendly public transport, he produces copious spreadsheets and travels to open days whenever he/we can, sometimes taking advantage of Travelodge stopovers.
Back to French; he had verbs to learn in readiness for starting the past tense. Four weeks ago, when I first came across this language centre and made tentative enquiries, he was asked to go for an interview and assessment to see whether he would be allowed to join an adult class and at what level. I was pleased the director of studies placed him in the group I thought he should join and was even more pleased when, following a trial in the group to see if he integrated, she said she was very happy to take him. This is the first time he has joined an adult group by himself, one or the other of us has always done a class with him, but we are trying to encourage him to be less dependant upon us. French grammar is difficult for him; he needs lots of reinforcement and repetition, although his vocabulary is fairly extensive because he is a strong auditory learner.
Next on the agenda today was some music practice. Rupert started playing the violin in a small group at school when he was 6. The others have long since given up owing to “peer pressure.” We’ve been through some difficult times, with poor short term memory and dyslexia, he found reading music hugely difficult and still does, but he’s preparing to take Grade 5 violin and Grade 3 piano in the summer. For a long time practice involved coaxing but now he fits it in as routine. At the present time he is battling with theory, fortunately one of his teachers is supremely patient, and I’m prepared to try to work things out if all else fails.
Following that we did a little Maths with the wonderful programme Maths2XL on the laptop. We were fortunate to be able to obtain a laptop, scanner and software for him to help with his dyslexia from the now defunct CAP. It’s been so well used and has made an enormous impact upon our son’s life.
The first thing we did when Rupert came out of school was to make him and me computer literate. 7 years ago I didn’t know how to switch one on. At that time we were allowed to take computer lessons at our local adult education centre (sadly not possible now for under 14s.) The turning point was when Rupert learnt to type using “Type to Learn,” and we both passed our timed word processing exam when he was 9 and I was 52. We then did another course followed by CLAIT and then in 2005 he passed GCSE ICT after a year’s course at a different college. The theory was difficult but with excellent coursework he obtained a grade B and much needed confidence.
We then spent the rest of the morning watching the first part of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” in French with English subtitles, staring Gérard Depardieu. A bonus of the French course is the loan of DVDs. books and magazines.
That took us to lunch. Rupert is a vegetarian. He refused meat when he was weaned and we have adapted accordingly, aided by the fact our dd became a vegetarian at age 13. Food has been something of an issue with our son; he has always been extremely reluctant to try new tastes and particularly textures, but as he gets older and goes out and about, more variety is creeping in. Last week’s cooking session in the dark and pouring rain at Explorer Scouts (that you will hear a great deal more about) ended in him apparently eating a billy can of lightly cooked (the fire didn’t light very well!) onions, potato, carrot and sweetcorn. Over the next 16 months, he has to prepare himself to accept a more varied diet as he wants to join an Explorer Scout Expedition to Russia for 3 weeks including a week’s camp in Siberia, where food will be of the freeze-dried packet variety.
Dh and son disappeared off for the rest of the day at about 12.45pm.
