Soph's School of the Mad: Week Eight

Hey Jim, how was half term?

Anyway, all my kids remain at home, probably for the rest of the school year, please send rum.

Saying that, do you know what the best thing about being the headmistress of a this tiny school is? Declaring your own inset days. After a surprisingly lovely half term of catching up with my actual job, taking up yoga (LOUD LOLZ), the children being relatively well behaved, and going out of Walton for the first time in ten weeks, I really didn't feel like getting back into in on Monday. And since it would have been an inset day if they'd been at school, I  made a decision. The children were pleased.

So, the last half term of the school year. Normally, this half term is an absolute tidal wave of shit to do. Sports day, end of year events, move up day, transition meetings. This year, notsomuch, but with a heavy dusting of question marks and uncertainty. Then there's the whole world being a binfire, which doesn't ease the mind.

Jack met Tuesday with a face of thunder and an attitude to match. He LOATHES maths, he LOATHES writing, he LOATHES subordinate clauses (same, dude), he HATES with a passion. Which was fun. Jim was also tense and grumpy, not least because he had to do two maths worksheets. THE AGONY of MATHS:

One of his activities this week is to try and make a stone age house from sticks (THANKS, THE SCHOOL) so we went to gather sticks at Itter Park, which was RAMMED.

Absolute size of him in his tree.

Jack's work is really DULL this week. "Write a conversation between two of these characters", but the characters are all boring as hell chatty people. So I invented Dave the Ghost and Sammy the Vampire for him to write about. Anyway, they had a lovely chat about their acts for the World Scaring Competition, illustrated thus:

Boo! Woo!

Jim made a robot out of a kit we bought.

This robot ran amok, covering my floor in pen, but it WORKED:

Jack and Alex went on a bug hunt on Thursday, mainly so I could coax Jimmy through some work on time. Time can be a really hard concept for autistic people. Jim has an excellent grasp of time facts like how many days in a week, how many minutes in an hour etc, but no idea how to estimate how time passes. But anyway, the bug hunt:

Alex came screaming in "WE FOUND A SPIDER"

"Oh wow! How many legs did it have?"

"EIGHT"

"And where does it live?"

"In his HOME"

...I mean, the kid's not wrong, but that's not quite what I was going for. This morning, he was running around shrieking "Stay at home kids, or you'll DIE" and when I asked him what happens when you die, he replied "Stikbots fall over". 

Also, through bribery, I finally got Alex to write something legible in a book. He appears to have done one of his developmental leaps lately. They happen every few months - he doesn't develop much at all, and then suddenly starts doing whatever I've despaired of teaching him. This time, sleeping through the night and writing in letters that aren't two feet tall. 

Meanwhile, Jack wrote a story opener about a girl called Lavender meeting a witch chanting gibberish, and Jim decided the only logical ending to Goldilocks is that Goldilocks should be eaten. Can't say I disagree with him:

And so to today, and another week over. This week has been complicated by the sad, but predictable death of my extremely elderly laptop meaning me, Jim and Jack have had to share the desktop. Jim's school are arranging a laptop, but this is taking an age. Tom had to go to actual work today as well. Boo, boo and hiss. Add my THIRD lockdown period (periods should be SUSPENDED in lockdown), and SHOUTING ENSUED.

The first shout was because Jack was asked to write some stuff inspired by a picture and wrote about a boy stranded on a giant baby head. I lost my shit. "APPLY YOURSELF, FOR FUCK'S SAKE", I screamed, in perhaps my finest moment this year. Then I lost my shit anew for no good reason, because Jim hadn't put much effort into his stone age poster. He tried to improve it with some 'facts'. I then wished he hadn't:

I'm not sure cave men invented the word poo, but fuck it, who cares?

The kids also made Lego Stonehenges, which BARELY warrant the title:

Sometimes, I feel like I've got this whole thing down. Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning. Let us all pray that next week is better.