he-special.org.uk blog

he-special.org.uk blog tag:www.he-special.org.uk,2005:5adafa3147e172def3673259a384b43f Textpattern 2009-05-24T18:54:43Z june http://www.he-special.org.uk/textpattern/ Christine 2009-01-31T22:01:50Z 2009-01-31T22:01:50Z Learning all the Time tag:www.he-special.org.uk,2009-01-31:5adafa3147e172def3673259a384b43f/0496c043637b7c7fdf26d271d273e193 <img src="http://www.he-special.org.uk/img/christine.gif" title="by Christine" alt="by Christine" width="150" height="41" /> I’ve taken the title of John Holt’s book as the title of today’s blog. It was a Christmas present from my parents in law and emphasised so much how children learn through everything they experience in their lives. I’ve seen so much proof of this with Christopher over the last two years (is it really that long?) that I have a deep unease at leaving my other children (without special needs) in mainstream school where the curriculum is so narrow and opportunities to explore so limited. I have reservations that I don’t know what they’re learning at school and how they are coping and I worry that the eldest (who is good at art ,drama and ICT) will see his self esteem disappearing as he struggles to keep up with his peers in English and maths because he finds it hard to get his ideas down on paper quickly enough. Only today my eldest son Thomas burst into the house having spent an ’”awesome’ afternoon, off roading with his friend’s dad in his landrover, quadbiking , and discussing motor cross and I thought ‘That’s what I want him to feel about school’. Although I occasionally worry that I’m not teaching Christopher (my home educated son with Aspergers) enough as I work part time, he never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge. Only the other day my husband said he’d noticed how Christopher has started to take control of his own time when I’m at work, reading books, watching documentaries,practising his drums. This is the son who suffers from Oppositional defiant disorder and refuses to comply with authority at school! He was in his room the other day drawing and I asked if I could look at his picture, he had LOADS of them which he had obviously been drawing over a matter of weeks, detailed pictures of the hotel we are staying in on holiday, the music shop, me in the supermarket, a war game he intends to design…so much creativity and imagination. Then one day he asked where Sicily was. I explained it was an island off the bottom of Italy.Two weeks later he rushed through to the kitchen to say he’d worked out where it was now as he’d seen a map on the television and could visualise it. And today he was discussing Japan’s involvement in WW2. My husband told him Japan only became involved after the Americans bombed some of their ships. My son replied ‘Oh at Pearl Harbour you mean?’- He is eight years old! I have to make a decision about home education for my other children. We were forced into it, we had no choice.What we didn’t know was how wonderful it is. It’s fun, it makes learning real, and it fosters the idea that education isn’t just about school, it’s about life and it never ever stops once you’ve got the bug! All I need to do now is go for it…watch this space! Christine 2008-12-30T20:25:30Z 2008-12-30T20:25:30Z Onwards and Upwards! [1] tag:www.he-special.org.uk,2008-12-30:5adafa3147e172def3673259a384b43f/977d2d3429aa6cbd814dc02c4f4404cd <img src="http://www.he-special.org.uk/img/christine.gif" title="by Christine" alt="by Christine" width="150" height="41" /> Well after almost a term of full time education we reached the Christmas holidays intact! Having deregistered Christopher from school we eventually received a phone call from the Education authority telling us what we ‘must’ do. This was followed up by an information pack. Fortunately having been an active member of the HE Special forum for 1 1/2 years I have to say that most of the information given on the phone was inacurate and misleading and if you knew what you were looking for ,in the information pack it was clear that, in fact ,most of the information I was led to believe was compulsary was in fact just recommended. I completed and sent off my educational philosophy and now await a meeting (subject to my agreement) with the Home education officer sometime in the New year! Full time home education has been so much more relaxing than flexi schooling although ,having had the benefit of time to see the effects , and to experiment with different ideas and forms of teaching I already knew Christopher’s strengths and weaknesses,knew he was a visual learner and had the advantage of knowing how successful one to one learning actually is . The icing on the cake was a comment made to me by a parent who had previously made it clear that there was no excuse for my son’s ‘bad behaviour’ at school – a criticism often levelled at parents of autistic children. She pointed out that Christopher had been so much calmer and seemed happier over the last couple of months- exactly the same length of time he hadn’t been attending school!( She wasn’t aware we had deregistered him!) What more proof do I need that I’m doing the right thing for my son! Christine 2008-10-28T23:03:00Z 2008-10-28T23:09:30Z Moving into Full time Home Education-Wish us Luck! tag:www.he-special.org.uk,2008-10-28:5adafa3147e172def3673259a384b43f/532866c4c96475f27f3226d9429ccc8d <img src="http://www.he-special.org.uk/img/christine.gif" title="by Christine" alt="by Christine" width="150" height="41" /> Well after one and a half years of flexi schooling we’ve finally taken the plunge and plan to start full time home education at the beginning of the next half term.Flexi schooling has provided us with the time to build up support networks and gain experience in Home education but it’s now time for us to cut our ties with the Education system and go it alone. Like many parents with an ASD child we have found the whole experience of mainstream education draining and stressful. We have fought for (and won) a statement with 15 hours support for Christopher in school. We have turned our lives upside down in our efforts to work alongside school and despite all this we have found that during holiday periods when the routine of school is taken away then the quality of our lives has improved and Christopher continues to flourish and learn in a way which would not be possible in a school enviroment. So yippee! No more meetings, phone calls and emails – we can get on with the business of Educating which is after all what school is supposed to be about isn’t it?Despite Government targets for more P.E in school and initiatives to introduce Music back into Primary schools, children like Christopher who excel in these subjects are losing out. Maths and literacy are seen as paramount, there’s very little time for anything else and subjects like music are fitted in at the end of a busy day as after school activities together with homework. Home education will allow Christopher to take his Drum lessons during the day (he’s already been to the Music Shop to look at Drum kits) ,participate in the local Football team,try out new sports and build on what he’s good at. Writing is less important at home as he can discuss what he’s learned when we listen to BBC Schools radio or an audio book in the car .We have all the time in the world to look for fossils on the beach and watch the tide rush in or make boats from plastic bottles, weighted down with plasticine balast because the project intriuged Christopher when he read about it in a book at bedtime. We don’t feel angry with school, they’ve done everything they can and we are grateful for that, but we are saddened that our little boy has been totally let down by a system which is supposed to be for everyone. The current system isn’t working, parents haven’t got choices, which is evidenced by the growing number of parents opting out of the Education system to Home educate and until the Government begin to listen, any child who doesn’t fit into their system will have a Special educational need! It’s a pretty good job they didn’t tell Thomas Eddison and Albert Einstein! Christine 2008-08-16T19:32:29Z 2008-08-16T19:32:29Z Frugal Living tag:www.he-special.org.uk,2008-08-16:5adafa3147e172def3673259a384b43f/cc9439f14fc858cf243122001e801104 <img src="http://www.he-special.org.uk/img/christine.gif" title="by Christine" alt="by Christine" width="150" height="41" /> During the summer we have continued with our home education as usual and have involved Thomas and Caitlin who usually attend school. I love the flexibility of being able to do what we want when we want to and the children have tried so many things that they don’t have time to do during the school term. One of the things we’ve begun to change in our household is our reliance on the utilities, like gas, electricity and petrol. With prices soaring we are convinced that the way forward is to become more self sufficient and it was brought home to us big time following our holiday in Florida in May. Disneyland was full of fast food, paper cups and napkins . Everyone travelled by car and the buildings which were lit up at night made me realise just how many ressources are being wasted. Our return to England made me rethink how we could change our lifestyle and albeit belatedly we started to separate our rubbish, compost more , and recycle what we didn’t want on recycle.co.uk. The children are in charge of the trips to the compost bin, telling dad off when he forgets and puts a banana skin in the kitchen bin instead of the compost bin, and of unloading the plastic bags and bottles at the recycling area at Tesco. They also sold some unwanted toys on ebay and made some money to buy new toys and I had a fantastic find in our local furniture recycling shop- a beautiful oak wardrobe and dressing table for Caitlin’s room for £120. They would have cost me £1000 had we bought them new. We even looked at recycling a dog at our local rescue centre, however as we had desperatly settled on a black labrador puppy we succumbed to a two week old puppy born in the farm up the road, rather than the flea bitten wolfhound which had been abandoned at Appleby horsefair by the gypsies which I rather took to! Even buying a dog led to obtaining a dog cage on recyucle.co.uk and our trip to the dog rescue wasn’t wasted as we learned about a charity which rescues battery hens which are then homed by families and which, after a few weeks settle nicely and finish their days as happy healthy free range hens. We plan to adopt 6 of them, Molly, Dolly, Polly and Holly, Heather and Birdseye (The last two names were chosen by the kids!) With a friend being on holiday Thomas was in charge of watering their vegetables and we were allowed to eat the crops. He picked fresh tomatoes, broccoli, mange tout and courgettes and that’s led to us talking about growing our own vegetables next year! We have already inherited apple, pear and plum trees and loads and loads of brambles but most of them were left on the ground to rot last year so we have resolved to use or give away as many as possible. If you are wondering what all this rambling has to do with home education then her’s just a few things which have learned…... We have read books about black labradors, caring for a puppy, done market research at pets at home and on the internet, read about hens and making a chicken coop. Decorated two old wellies for the village horticultural show and made a vegetable animal to boot (sorry the joke wasn’t intentional) from my neighbour’s very, very large courgette (and won second prize). It’s education about REAL LIFE and revolves around people rather than material possessions and I’m really proud of all they have learned! Book reading has trebled over the summer holiday and Thomas,(who is generally very reluctant to read if he can avoid it) came down the other day and asked me if it would be possible to build a den in the garden out of straw.He’s been reading ‘Conor’s Eco Den’ by Pippa Goodheart and it had fired his imagination! I’ll be very sad when Thomas and Caitlin go back to school , but we’ve done so much above and beyond the national curriculum and working with them gives me the opportunity to assess their strengths and weaknesses so that I can facilitate them in what they want to learn rather than what the government dictates their teachers should teach them. Christine 2008-05-31T19:42:00Z 2008-06-01T09:04:25Z Travel broadens the Mind! [1] tag:www.he-special.org.uk,2008-05-31:5adafa3147e172def3673259a384b43f/c7369f72748535b38a80700ae9272344 <img src="http://www.he-special.org.uk/img/christine.gif" title="by Christine" alt="by Christine" width="150" height="41" /> 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!