Soph's School of the Mad: Final Week

My god, it had BETTER be the final week. I have learned much about myself in the last few months, and the main thing is no, I really do not want to be a teacher. But I've done my best, and I don't feel like the older two have wildly suffered academically, and that is the main thing. Alex is a totally different matter. As things stand, they're going back to school in September. Alex will be in year one, Jack in year five and Jim in year seven.

On Monday, Jim did some work on pollination, mainly sniggering about plants DOING SEX on themselves. Part of the work was doing a quiz, identifying fruit and vegetables by the plant. I incorrectly identified a grape vine as 'WINE'. WINE! IT GROWS ON THE WINE VINE!

We tasted honey, we did some pollination using chalk and this amazing diagram:

And we had a really good look at the anatomy of a poppy. Then we declared that we would never look at plant biology again.

Jack wrote a letter to his new teacher, warning her that he has an extremely short temper but "gets over it quickly". The child speaks the truth.

Then me and Jim had a Teams meeting to meet his new teacher and TA for next year. Jim, nervous as hell, ate nine cookies during this half hour meeting and informed the new teacher than people are God's cookies, so he certainly got to sample the madness of Jim.

Tuesday began with a walk to the chemist. Jack proved HIGHLY reluctant to do any work after this, but managed this acrostic poem:

What a wonderful day it was
Everyone outside, playing and shouting
And then, all of a sudden
Thunder destroying everything in its path
Hail knocking people out
Everyone rushed to their homes
Restless and ruined, everyone went to bed

Goth.

Jim started work on his All About Me powerpoint. Highlights included:

On Wednesday, Jack and Alex (with CONSIDERABLE GUIDANCE AND HELP) made some thank you cards for their teachers. Can't help but feel they should be making ME cards, but fuck it:

Do you remember Jim did his SATs (for NO REASON) a couple of weeks ago? Well, he got the results. He got 95 in maths, which is absolutely standard for year six. He got 111 in English, which is AMAZING. Considering he did no revision at all, and did them at home, I think he did astonishingly well and actually feel quite weepy about it. It's hard to replicate school at home, and it's 100 times harder to replicate a SEN school at home, but this feels like external validation that I haven't done a shit job.

His teacher came over on Wednesday to take his laptop back to school, so we got to say goodbye. She's gone above and beyond throughout this whole thing, and has become an extension of our family. Alex told her he loved her on video chat, and then she brought Jim a fig tree for being a STUDIOUS GOOSE. I have to say, he's been remarkably amenable to home schooling, all things considered. I think he's enjoyed the routine:

On Thursday, I was woken up by Alex dropping onto my abdomen on both knees, and then weeping at my wailing. I survived, and tried to get Jack and Alex to watch Blue Planet so they could LEARN OF THE SEA, but they were not interested in LEARNING OF THE SEA, so they abandoned ship. I do not think any of my children will be mariners, unlike their forebears.

Jim's school issued a sports day challenge, which he did in the most grudging, half-hearted way you can imagine. "I WILL NOT DO PRESS UPS" he screamed. "I CAN'T DO THIS" he howled, after two laps of the garden. "THIS IS TORTURE" he wailed as he flapped through six star jumps. He will never be an Olympian:

Then he finished off his Harry Potter comprehension and I ran out of work to give him.

We went to the primary school to say goodbye to the boys' teachers at lunchtime. This was EMOTIONALLY NECESSARY for all of us. When Alex saw his TA, he ran up to her and sat on her knee and we all tried not to cry. He hasn't seen her since March! She took him to see his new classroom and meet his new teacher. We also said goodbye to Jack's old teacher who's leaving the school and their SENCo.

Today, Friday, the kids have had a day off, as they would have at actual school. Alex insisted on finishing his reading program:

THE PRIDE!
The big two are planning on watching ALL FOUR SHREKS BACK TO BACK, and I have sorted out all the stuff they've done, filing much into the bin, turning my dining room back into something approaching a normal family room rather than a school (albeit, filled with Warhammer). Tom's got some time off work- actual time off, not working from home - and I've got a PhD to prepare for.

The last day of reception, year four and year six. What a fucking weird year:

Thank you to Tracey, Claire and Louise for keeping me sane, and thank you to ALL the teachers at Discovery for being superstars.

And thank you, o general reader, for reading my weekly blog of madness. Lockdown has been weird and lonely, frustrating and endless. Way back in March, I posted on Facebook suggesting that families try and have a routine to teach their kids because 'they might end up being out of school for six months', never dreaming that would end up being the case. SEN schools weren't supposed to close. They did. Alex was supposed to be able to go back to school. He didn't. Jack, the one child desperate to go back, was never given the option. It has been a bizarre juggling act of trying to teach them, trying to teach ME to be a teacher, trying to meet their SEN needs, and trying to still be mum at the end of it while also working myself.

If I have to do it again, I will. But I don't want to.

Enjoy your summer. Stay safe. CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Thirteen

The fifth and final household birthday of the year took place on Saturday. Alex was FIVE! We went to see his grandparents, and he reacted completely normally to being sung to...


On Monday, I asked him to sound out this word:

"SUN-KUH! CUNT!"

No...not quite.

This week, as the end of term draws near, Jimmy has been asked to do a piece of creative writing so his teachers can assess his English ready for year seven. On Monday, we started with some planning, and also looked at Cinnabar moths. Our garden is OVERRUN with cinnabar caterpillars, but apparently they'll all eat each other soon so we won't have a garden of beautiful red moths. Boo.

Jack's topic this week is SPORT. Ostensibly, the cancelled Olympics, but he has requested to learn more about rugby as well. So...I guess we will.

On Tuesday, a relatively quiet morning. Jim worked on his MAGNUM OPUS, screeching with indignation because I disabled the autocorrect grammar tool on Word. He WILL learn what punctuation means.

Jack had to interview me about lockdown life. He asked some good questions: "Do you like Boris Johnson?" (NEWP), "How much beer or wine have you drunk?" (ONE BOTTLE, JUST ONE). We also took a lovely SELFIE:

God, I need to dye my hair. I haven't been this blonde since 2011.

We also got word on Alex and Jack's class allocations for next year, which sent me into a panicked spiral. HOW CAN HE GO INTO YEAR ONE WHEN HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A SENTENCE IS???

On Wednesday, Jim got up at the CRACK in order to finish his Great Work. Jack watched some videos about bullying and nouns. Alex did absolutely nothing, because (and I'll own it), I fucking forgot. Jim can go into this mode of being so absolutely overwhelming that you lose the will to live. Full Colin Robinson style. And on Wednesday, he did this with such FEROCITY that I was close to tears by midday.

I also bought some school uniform. Who knows if they'll ACTUALLY go back to school in September? Who knows anything anymore? What ARE plans? What IS the future? Based on this instability, I have refused to pay £6.20 for a single, tiny logo'd polo shirt, and bought supermarket crap. SUPERMARKET CRAP ALL ROUND. Jim gets to wear black polo shirts next year, because he's in year 7. I don't know who's more delighted: him for getting to wear black, or me because I don't have to do a white wash every week.

On Thursday, Jim edited his Great Work (reluctantly):

And illustrated My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson. Jimmy HATES this poem. It is for 'babies' apparently. No taste:

We also looked at how far two metres is.

About four times further than he initially believed.

Jack was asked to do a sport related newspaper frontpage, and WE WENT ALL OUT MOTHERFUCKER:

Look, it's been a really long week and sometimes I like to overachieve on my children's behalf.

Alex has spent the week in a post-birthday comedown. Yesterday, he VERY SLIGHTLY grazed his foot and went around for the rest of the day wrapped in a fleece. Then he fell asleep, so we couldn't get him to bed when the time came. Then he had a bath and WOULD NOT PUT HIS SLIGHTLY GRAZED FOOT IN THE WATER, so spent the bath on one leg, like a fucking flamingo. Sometimes, parenting autistic children is a voyage of discovery and genius. Mostly, it's trying to persuade your kid to do things like PUT BOTH FEET IN THE WATER.

C'est la vie.

FRIDAY, FRIDAY, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY. Jim did some beautiful botanical drawing, as he's supposed to be learning about plant biology, but apparently 'already knows it all'. Steady on there, Carl Linnaeus:

Yes, that's the real poppy alongside.

He also has some FEELINGS on time travel.

At one point this morning, I turned to see Jack's book review descending into madness:

QUITE.

Anyway, one more week, and it's mostly a week of doing FUCK ALL, THANK GOD.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Twelve

The boys were at their dad's at the weekend, and rather than do anything productive, I sat around in an immense pre-menstrual piss, watching old Glastonbury. Alex, however, went mad in the garden doing chalk lines everywhere

And planting stuff

Then he sorted his cars out into colours and CRIED BECAUSE I WOULDN'T LET HIM RACE THEM ALL AGAINST EACH OTHER.

It would have taken THE REST OF HIS NATURAL LIFE.

Monday dawned.  Urgh. Nobody wanted to get out of bed, least of all me. I've adjusted Jack's timetable again to take the element of choice out of it because I think it was stressing him out. He likes to know what he's doing and get it done.

Meanwhile, Jim was doing some of the craft stuff we didn't do last week because of BLOODY MATHS. We made Stonehenge out of Bourbon biscuits

Surprisingly difficult, but a good breakfast

Then he designed this Iron Age shield. LOOK AT THE DETAIL! LOOK AT THE BOSS! WHAT A BOSS!

On Monday lunchtime, Jim's teacher brought round a stack of SATs-esque papers. Here's the thing with year six SATs. Mainstream schools start telling kids in year five how important their SATs are, how desperately, critically VITAL they are to a good transition into secondary school, which as any fule kno is bullshit. Jim was in mainstream in year five. He firmly believes that he will SIMPLY NOT BE ALLOWED into secondary phase unless he has done his SATs. So he asked to do some tests. I asked him teacher if she could facilitate this (he would have done his SATs if they hadn't been abandoned) and therefore we have had SATs week over a month late. And to be fair to Jim, there has been very little howling.

Jack was asked to do some work on Tim Peake. Jack is thoroughly unimpressed with astronauts. Going into space is his idea of hell. He does not think going into space was the peak of Peake's career. He would not like to go himself, no thank you madam. Oh, and he wants to join Scouts RIGHT NOW, when no groups are meeting.

On Tuesday, we began the SATs. In Jim's school, exam conditions are not quite the same as mainstream, and Jim's teacher had no issue with using cat videos and sweets to keep him regulated while he did them:

And to his credit, he did the whole maths reasoning paper without screaming once. On Wednesday, he did two of the English papers, again without screaming:

On Thursday, two more English papers. Still no screaming.

In non-SATs news, he also wrote a twisted version of the Three Little Pigs in which the pigs mutilated the wolf, because my children are very like me.

Jack's loathing of astronauts continued throughout the week. God, he hates astronauts. On Wednesday, he sulked because I ASKED HIM TO READ A BOOK. The child who normally has at least four books on the go.

He was also horrified by this video. Look at his face. "MUM, THIS IS CRINGE, he yelled.

Tbf, I made him watch Beyonce at Glastonbury on Monday, so he knows what this song SHOULD BE.

I asked Jack to write about what exactly he hates about the idea of being an astronaut. Some highlights:
"You have to wear a big heavy suit that makes you look like an alien. When you get to space, there is nothing to do until lunch except jump up and down, shouting 'WE MADE IT! WOO HOO!'"

Quite.

Alex hasn't done a lot this week. I keep feeling dreadful about him in particular missing out at school. I'm trying to be reassured that everyone is the same, and the school will help him catch up, but I'm still struggling to reconcile this with my terror of his developmental delays becoming intractable. Anyway, he has discovered that he REALLY LIKES Top Gear, and watches it in rapt silence in the mornings while his brothers are working.

I taught him a bit about money:

Not sure he actually understands the PHILOSOPHY of money, but then who does? He knows the nominal value of coins, which isn't particularly useful when everyone's paying on contactless at the moment. And his letter formation is gradually, so gradually, improving:

Bless his little face. He's FIVE tomorrow. Fucking five. Five years ago, it was one of the hottest days of the year, so I naturally celebrated by spending half the day in hospital, missing Wimbledon, and then having my waters break all over the hallway when I got home. Memories!

On Friday, Jim did his arithmetic paper, truly saving the best for last. He did finish it, although I shouted "WHAT IS THIRTY SIX PLUS SEVEN??" at him so loud that it made Alex cry. Oops. Meanwhile, Jack wrote a space book for Alex:

Apocalyptic, I like it.

We got word from all schools that they expect to re-open in September, so I wept openly with relief. Jim, as usual, summed it up rather succinctly in his Harry Potter comprehension:

Two more weeks.