Soph's School of the Mad: Week Seven

To send the kids back to school, or not to send the kids back to school, that is the question. I don't mind Jack and Jimmy at home, to be honest, although Jack's timetable leaves a lot to be desired. They've swung from one extreme of far too much work, to not enough. Jimmy's work continues to need a lot of parental guidance, but I get a list of learning objectives with it, so at least I know what we're attempting to do.

But Alex. Gawd, Alex. Alex is developmentally delayed. Not all autistic kids are - Jim never was - but Alex is. So, we're already on the back foot in terms of what he can do. While he was in school, he was catching up nicely. He potty-trained, learned to dress himself, learned when to eat and what hunger is, as well as picking up reading, numbers and phonics in h is two terms at school. At home, however, he has stopped. Regressed even, in some areas. All the kids will be behind when school resumes properly, but Alex is at a disadvantage. He's not been getting any of the numerous therapies he was having in school, and I am frightened I am doing long term harm by not being good enough. I'm his mum. I'm not a teacher, not a TA, not an OT, not a speech and language therapist. I know more than most people about autistic children, what with formerly being one, but I'm not qualified.

But to go to school, and be taught with seven other random kids, in a random, bare classroom, at widely spaced desks, by a teacher he doesn't know? For a few hours per day? Without play time, without teachers allowed to touch him to comfort him when he's afraid? No toys? No carpet time? No PE?
No, I don't think so. I'm not the only SEND parent with this problem. I'm not the only SEND parent terrified of getting it wrong. But what the schools are able to provide at this time is not 'school': it's more like prison, a temporary solution to an awful problem. He is only four. He needs to be loved and nurtured.

So he's staying at home until things improve, and I hope I don't ruin him, and I hope I can stop crying whenever I think about it.

Enough depression, back to the adventures in home school. On Monday, neither of the schools sent me any work until 11am. So Jack did some maths online, and Jim did some work that was left over from last week. And then we sacked off work and made bread. I think knowing how to cook is a useful lifeskill, that generally gets binned off the curriculum. Bread is piss easy to make, so I talked them through the steps. I've been getting REAL YEAST from Morrisons, so we fermented some in liquid and in sugar to see what they did and how they smelled. Then I made them a batch of bread dough, divided it in half and let them flavour and knead it. Jim went for smoked paprika and chilli, Jack went for sumac and mint. SO ELEGANT, SO REFINED:

SO DEMENTED. Anyway, they turned out fine.

On Tuesday, Jack had sod all to do, AGAIN, but did write about his breadmaking. Jim also wrote about his breadmaking, and then we cracked out the science experiments. God, I'm sick of schools veering wildly between "GROW SOME PLANTS AND THEN COOK A MEAL WITH THE PRODUCE" to "write...some...sentences?" in the timetabled work, so I got a box of science experiments from the Curiosity Box shop. Jim's teacher informed me that he needs to know how to do circuit diagrams, so we made a cat with LIGHT UP EYES, and then Jim drew the circuit diagram to match. Complete with cat:

It's not got a nob, it's the end of the bread bag. Because the cat has put her head through a slice of bread, obviously.

Make the work fit the child...make the work fit the child...

Alex had...a great day:

Wednesday was fucking hot, and everyone was too tired and hot to do anything useful. The boys both made an alphabet of food, and Jim had a video lesson. ALAS AND ALACK, my elderly laptop can't cope with the heat, and cut us off halfway through. Jim was bereft. Tom was bereft at the idea of putting ZOOM on his PRECIOUS MACBOOK, but did it so Jack could still have his guitar lesson. He's learning Amerika. He is metal as fuck.

Last week, Jim's teacher suggested we attempt to grow cress in a shape by using cookie cutters filled with cress seed. Jim chose a gingerbread man. It went so dramatically wrong, because when watered, all the carefully placed seeds went for a swim. Now I'm mildly afraid of what life we have wrought:

Don't feed it after midnight.

Jack was an emotional mess on Thursday, particularly when I told him it didn't seem likely he would be going back to school until September. He wrote a poem about coronavirus, and HARD AGREE, LITTLE DUDE:

There was a point on Friday morning, when Jim was writing false facts about moles ("MOLES WERE CREATED WHEN GOD SNEEZED, MOLES ARE ALL NAMED BARRY") and Jack was writing a deranged powerpoint of dialogue listening to Party Rock Anthem at 120dB when I wondered when exactly I'm going to crack up and get the sweet release of death or madness. Apparently, half term has come at precisely the right time:

They're planning a sleepover tonight. Jack is going to sleep UNDER Jim's cabin bed. They're going to make brownies. They're going to watch Moana. They've made bro cards to give access to Jim's bedroom.
I'm going to give it half an hour before Jack decides he hates it and goes back to his own bed. C'est la vie.

Let us all PRAY FOR REST. Have a lovely half term. TOUCH NOTHING, LICK NOTHING.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Six

Fuck me, but this government doesn't know which way its arse hangs. "GO BACK TO WORK. UNLESS YOU CAN'T. IN WHICH CASE DON'T. ALSO MAYBE SEND THE KIDS BACK TO SCHOOL? NO? OK, BACKTRACK." Wankers.

Monday was a bleak day. The kids were in foul moods, after a weekend of having fun, chiefly running around the close shrieking with joy at being allowed out of the house. Yes, I let them out. Nobody tell the rozzers. I also had fun with my bottle of Captain Morgan, like a pirate of old. Too much fun. As my hangover seamlessly segued into a migraine of epic proportions, I could not be doing with Jim screaming his fucking lungs out because he couldn't find his headphones. His headphones that were on the chair in his bedroom. In front of him. Trying to explain the point of maths problems to Jack, while Jim howled like a wolf, and Alex ran amok is so RESTFUL, HUN. BLESSED, HUN, HASHTAG FUCKING BLESSED.

I didn't get hold of any co-codamol until 2pm, and then it only lasted three hours, during which I banged out some work before the nauseating headache smacked me back in the fifth nerve.

Tuesday was mildly better, although my brain remained a giant throbbing ball of meaty hate. Under the promise of being allowed to play Minecraft if they got work done, Jim managed to learn about synonyms and antonyms, and created this rainbow:

This rainbow is going to cheer the staff at PCH up, apparently. I particularly enjoy the slightly dark energy of the Thank You.

And Jack, eventually, made a factfile about the Mayans...for the second time since lockdown started. I feel like the school might be running out of things for the kids to do. Not only is this the second time they've been asked to make a Mayan factfile, it was also on the to-do sheet twice. Maybe they just really NEED a lot of Mayan factfiles. Who knows?

Even Alex managed to do some work. Behold this FINE number formation. Did you ever see such a beautiful nine?

That evening, I discovered a murder. Stretch Sonic, a distant relation of Stretch Armstrong, had lost his leg and been concealed under a sofa cushion, where he had bled out. I don't know what they use to make those weird stretchy beasts, but it is sticky as fuck. Jimmy, who is my chief suspect in this murder, screamed his bloody head off about it. Using hot water and a knife, I managed to scrape most of it off, cursing all the while.

Jimmy started Wednesday off by having a massive meltdown about not being able to see his nanny. I bribed him with the promise of pudding from a dessert bar (they're DELIVERING IN THE CITY YAAAAS). Jack made a poster for the NHS, begging for a cure to stop his brother having meltdowns:

Fair. As mentioned, I haven't felt quite right all week. By Friday, I worked out that I've been attacked with postviral fatigue syndrome, which I've had before and should probably have expected in corona's bleak wake, but I didn't. Anyway, video calls finished me off on Wednesday morning. Nevertheless, the children got their work done and they were REWARDED:

He couldn't finish that, by the way. Eyes bigger than his belly.

This week, Jimmy has been looking at Charlie and the Chocolate factory, specifically the boat ride through the tunnel on the chocolate river. Jimmy was asked to storyboard this, and then make a comic strip based on him going for a ride at the chocolate factory. His comic strip took an unexpectedly dark turn, when he fell overboard, was sucked up a pipe and discovered...Willy Wonka's meth lab*:

The ending of this story is worth reproducing in full:
"So Jim informed the FBI and Willy Wonka never ended up paying his taxes and got the death sentence for drug usage. The CIA then turned his chocolate factory into a war base. THE END"

Quite.

Jack's avatar on Times Tables Rock Stars gets more lifelike by the hour:

Dr Jack, bringing you PAIN!

On Friday, Jack wrote a long and bizarre murder mystery where the main villain was Principal Buttface. I made him change that to Principal Butters before sending it to his teacher. He spending a lot of time with VORDERMAN on Maths Factor now.

Jim, after doing various things on Isambard Kingdom Brunel (ft. It's A Big Top Hat If You Want To Get Ahead, the innuendo went OVER his head), made a model of a tunnel:

Yeah, not sure ol' IKB would have been impressed with that. His last job of the week was to paint a castle in the style of Monet. Jim sincerely believes that when he is a famous artist, this original work will be worth millions. You saw it here first:

And we're done. One more week and then it's half term. We can do it! I'm off to make khachapuri, having conceived a deep and abiding longing earlier this week. Morrisons on Lincoln Road is selling live yeast, if anyone needs it.



* He has multiple geek-themed cookbooks that feature recipes from Breaking Bad. I am not cooking meth, or letting him watch wildly inappropriate TV. Honest.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Five

I don't want you to think that homeschooling is all bad. I get to spend more time with my children than I think I ever have, and although sometimes I want to THROTTLE THEM, it is mostly fairly rewarding. I love to see what they create: Jim did this cherry blossom picture on Monday using Q-tips and poster paint:

And we need the routine. We didn't get any school work sent through for this week until 10am on Monday. We were like WRAITHS, aimlessly wandering the house, wondering what to do while we waited. 

Monday ended up being generally a day of stress. Alex used his poo to decorate the bathroom because AUTISM IS A BLESSING, and then had a tyrannical meltdown because he was told to have a bath to rid him of the stench of poo. He did not want a bath, and kept screaming "NO MUMMY, DON'T TOUCH ME, NAUGHTY MUMMY". A blessing, I tell thee.

In the evening, Jack complained of belly ache. In the time-honoured fashion of mothers everywhere, I told him to have a poo and go to sleep. Wailing and screaming ensued. I did the rebound test for appendicitis and the poor kid screamed his head off, so I contacted out of hours, and thankfully, they called me back before I had an aneurysm. After some discussion, the doctor decreed that Jack's probably pulled a muscle going to the loo, but to call back if he got worse. Jack perked up quite a bit after this, especially since the doctor told him to drink some warm milk. My heart rate soared to the heavens and took some time to return to earth.

Anyway, four day week, whatever that means at this point. I only know what day it is because of Jack's little timetable, I have no idea of the DATE, and they MOVED the bank holiday, the bastards. Short week meant three days of getting some work done, so we could do VE day work on Thursday and then STOP.

BUT FIRST, MOAR KITKATS. Yes, another tasting session: green tea, some sort of custard thing, and sakura mochi. The children made tasting notes ("SMELLS OF LEAVES, WHY DOES IT SMELL OF LEAVES???") and rated the green tea one as best. 

Then we put Jack in a box because why the hell not?

Jack also designed this salad. Needless to say, he's unlikely to become a chef any time soon with his FISH SALAD.

On Wednesday, Tom aged up yet another year. The fourth birthday in our house since this debacle started - can we make it a full house in July? We made him a cake, and thankfully, it was not a complete disaster. No ants! No paper!

On Thursday, I taught both boys about VE Day. I'm not jingoistic: war is shit. The second world war traumatised the nation, and killed almost half a million British people. I think celebrating VE day is fine, as long as you understand that it's a celebration of the end of war, not the victorious British. There is no glory, only relief and resolution.

So I made the kids sad by telling them the horrors of war for children; blackouts, rationing, no sweets, bombing and air raid shelters. We made a family tree and looked at what their great-grandfathers did in the war (farmer, ambulance driver, submariner, child!). The school suggested the children ask their grandparents what they did in the war. Not sure my 59 year old dad would appreciate such a line of questioning.

I played them an air raid siren, which finished Jim off, and then we had to wait half an hour for him to calm down.

Jim and Jack both did some writing about VE day, including a really good newspaper frontpage by Jack. And Jim, always game for a video, did this masterpiece:


NO NAZIS!

Alex has spent the week thus:

So much work!

And that's been our week. Probably the worst in terms of getting anything done, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the weird four day week, maybe it's lockdown fatigue, maybe I'm just a bad mother this week, I dunno. I hope your long weekend is a joy, despite all this, and next week is better.

Stay in, stay well.

Homeschooling: Reality Check

This is not a blog about the weekly fun we have home schooling. This is a blog about the reality.

I saw some people on twitter today claiming that what parents are doing is NOT home-schooling. We are not writing the curriculum. We are not writing the lessons. We are not researching the resources. We are simply delivering what the teachers have devised, and that is different. Less.

So, here is our case study in lockdown education. Before I begin: I cannot fault either school for their care about our emotional wellbeing during this, and I really appreciate the absolute horror of trying to deliver half a term of work remotely. This is not criticism, just observation.

Our kids are in two schools. Jim is eleven. He's in a specialist autism school, in a small transition class of mixed age and ability. The school give every child an individual curriculum, based on their needs and interests as far as possible. Jack and Alex are both in a mainstream primary school. Jack is in year four, and Alex is in foundation.

Jim's school provide a weekly curriculum on Monday afternoons. This is a seven page document, including learning outcomes, ideas for activities, and is holistic: it includes objectives on communication, social development and autism-specific psychology. We are also sent resources. His teacher does a face to face tutorial once or twice a week, and phones me weekly as well. She is in constant email/messaging contact. The school have provided Jim with a 365 login and Teams, so we have the software necessary to do the work.

Jack's school send out a loose timetable every two weeks. It includes set spellings, and then a choice of activities to do across the week in topic, english and maths. He gets nine choices in each, and has to do eight of them: I let him choose which one to bin off. There are no additional resources provided.

For Alex, we get one sheet which includes links to the songs they use in school to teach phonics, and a few recommended activities. Alex will do ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THEM. He LOATHES the sheet. He REJECTS it.

Jim's timetable is the most completely presented, although it still requires a fair amount of me doing lesson planning. He asked if he could learn about Japanese art recently: he's really into cherry blossom. So I told his teacher, and I started looking up Japanese art resources (as did she). I bought paint and brushes for him to do his own. He's also doing castles, and I ended up writing my own powerpoint to teach his whole cohort about the history of castles, because I couldn't find anything that went into the right amount of depth for his age.
What I find difficult about Jim's work is deciding what lessons to do when: what's going to overwhelm him? What's he going to struggle to settle down with? Last week he was asked to make a plan of his bedroom, and then his local area: autistic kids can really struggle with spatial navigation (the idea of where your body is in space and time). This simple task really upset him because he didn't understand why he couldn't write down what he knew.
Every session begins with Jim listening to an audiobook and then doing comprehension questions, but this is the only work he can do entirely independently. Everything else requires my presence and guidance: this is why he's in a special school.

Jack's timetable is, to a certain extent, determined by him. He chooses one activity from each section on a Monday and Friday, and two for every other day. I try to make sure he doesn't front load the week with stuff that's easy because then he's gets steadily grumpier throughout the week. He is fairly independent, but so easily distracted that I have to monitor him throughout. He gets really upset if he gets things wrong, and will give up at the first hint of difficulty.
The difficulty with him lies in getting him resources. Sometimes the suggested links from the school don't work, sometimes they're in a format he can't engage with. Sometimes he just doesn't understand what he's being asked, and needs extra. Sometimes his timetable asks him to do ludicrous things: "Think about your class reading book. What do you think happens next?" He hasn't heard his class reading book since mid-March: how on Earth is he supposed to remember the plot?
I find teaching Jack the easiest in terms of planning, but the hardest in terms of motivation and interest. If you're not interested in rivers and pollution, and half the activities are on that, it doesn't give you anywhere to go.

Alex is simply against learning at home. Tom is supposed to teach him, but he's working from home doing remote support (ironically, for schools), and that takes precedence. So AFTER I've finished teaching his brothers, I try and teach him a bit of writing. He has really poor pen control and in school, had daily speech and language and occupational therapy. I don't know what they were doing, so I can't replicate this, and just have to wing it. I tell you now, when you have an autistic child and have just had a year of non-stop intensive diagnostic assessments, courses, and meetings to plan his ongoing support, to suddenly have to wing it is really disconcerting and frightening. WHAT IF WE MESS HIM UP FOR LIFE?

As well as all the above, home schooling is RESOURCE HEAVY. Jim's school provided him with one, A4 unlined exercise book when they closed. Jack was provided with one, A5 lined exercise book. Alex was given nothing. I asked Jim's school to provide a lined book as well, which they did. But that's all we got in terms of physical resources. Here are some the main resources I have to use every day:
Pencils and coloured pencils
Exercise books
Paper (coloured and plain)
Printed worksheets (printer, ink, paper)
Felt tip pens, liner pens
Modelling materials and PVA glue
Wipe clean whiteboard and pens (for Alex to practice writing)
Audible (for Jim's comprehension work)
Microsoft 365 (provided free for Jim, not for Jack: thankfully we have a work account)
Two separate computer systems with 365 and video call capability
Poster paint and brushes
My phone (for making youtube videos)
The internet

Then there's the endless sea of online resource: Twinkl, Bitesize, Youtube, WhiteRose Maths, The Maths Factor, Time Tables Rock Stars, Mathletics.

We are extremely lucky because our income has not changed since lockdown started, but you need MONEY to run a school at home, and you need TECHNOLOGY and to be IT literate. I can't work while 'school' is in session because Jim uses my laptop and Jack uses the desktop. So after a full morning teaching the kids, I have a full afternoon of work. A lot of their suggested activities are 'optimised for tablet'. We do not have a tablet, and I'm not about to go and buy one, but I also keep wondering if I should.

Is this homeschooling in the sense that I am developing the curriculum? Well, not exactly, but I would argue that I am the one who decides how the curriculum is delivered. I am the one being three teachers in one person, teaching three separate curriculums, for three hours, every single day. I am responsible for getting them to work, for trying to keep them vaguely up to speed. I decide what they do every day, and when they've done enough. I do the marking, I decide what needs more work and what's good enough.

And then I turn back into Mummy, who looks after them, feeds them, reassures them, breaks up their fights, cleans up their mess, and reads them to sleep.

I'm an intelligent, academic woman, who (unofficially) tutors university students, and lectures other adults on history, and I do not feel remotely qualified to do this. It is stressful: a Sisyphean task that feels endless and unrewarding. The most reward I can expect is that my children will not be too far behind when school resumes.

There are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of parents doing the same thing worldwide, in differing circumstances, hoping against hope that they are doing enough. Nobody claps for us, because we are doing what we absolutely have to do, from the comparitive safety of our homes. We have a choice: teach or do not teach, it's up to you. We do not yet trouble the national discourse, although I wonder what the news will be on education in a year's time.

It is the hardest thing I have ever done.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Four

First things first, Jack turned nine! You remember the cake we were making?

Look at it! A glorious specimen. Except...I put the cake carrier on the floor, in a secluded corner overnight to keep it out of the way of the boys. I forgot that our kitchen is plagued with ants.

And ants got into the cake carrier.
And THAT was bad.

And then it transpired that I had left the baking parchment on the base of the top cake. Mmm. Baking paper.

So, it was a catastrophe, but the bottom layer tasted nice!

Anyway. School continues. Monday was shit. Isn't it always? Five weeks of lockdown, and Mondays STILL feel wrong.We decided to bin off Andy's Wild Workouts and try Cosmic Yoga. A lovely, earnest, BENDY woman called Hayley did Pokemon yoga. Alex got right into it, when he wasn't just lying on the floor:

Jim had run out of school-set work, so we made a temperature graph:

I asked him, "what do you think would happen if you did this graph all year?"
"The temperature would just keep going up" he replied
Looking forward to our apocalyptic winter...

Jack was given a colourful floating drone thing for his birthday. It arrived on Monday afternoon. "Place your hand under the drone and watch it hover" said the instructions. It did not hover. It flew away. It is free now.

On Tuesday, Jack made a video explaining partitioning in maths. He is truly a genius. He also did a Warhol portrait:

Jim had a bad day on Tuesday. For about three years, he's had a phobia of bubbles. This has become so extreme, that we do not even SAY THE WORD in this house, but instead say 'the B word'. He was doing Cosmic Yoga with the cheery maiden, and she said bubble. Jim lost his shit and never really recovered. But Wednesday was much better. He designed a castle powerpoint about a trip to Castle Rising, and just about coped with having a video lesson over Teams. I mentioned his castle topic. He was asked to build a model in 'any medium'. How about...in Stronghold?

Yaaaas, much better than pizza boxes and bogroll tubes!

Jim's school holds a regular community cafe. Children and their parents are invited, and the older children serve the food and take the money. It helps teach the kids to socialise, and the 'script' for going to a cafe, and lets their parents meet each other and see their kids in school - when your child goes to school by taxi, there's very limited interaction with the school itself. Anyway, these cafes cannot happen in lockdown, so we did one over video chat instead with Jim's teacher and another member of staff. The kids were in raptures at the idea of having tea and cake in the middle of the morning, and broadly speaking, it worked quite well. Except Jack kept being obnoxious, and Jim started picking his nose halfway through, and Alex came in and started trying to CLIMB INTO the laptop which is his new reaction to any video call.  Speaking of Alex, he can now write his numbers one to ten. They're not entirely recognisable, but they exist. And Tom continues to teach him French. Monsieur Daddy indeed! I try and save fun work for Friday, because I am not actually a tyrant. Jack's been really grouchy all week. He misses his friends, he's sick to death of Jim, and the weather hasn't been good enough for him to prowl about the garden - his favourite pastime. So, he looked at Lichtenstein and comic strips, and had a go at designing his own:

Boom! Jim likes food. He really, really likes food. We were talking about green food last week, and I told him about matcha tea kitkats. Three English pounds sterling and several days later, this arrived:

Three bloody quid! Robbed. Green, sweet, bit meh if you ask me, the Kitkat purist, but he loved it. For his school work, he was asked to write or film a news report. You know by now that my children will choose to make a video over writing any day...
He didn't disappoint.

And that has been a WHOLE TWENTY EIGHT DAYS of home schooling. We've all survived. Sometimes we've even enjoyed it. God only knows how much longer this will go on for, but on it will go. Enjoy the weekend!