Dyslexia Testing

Yesterday we got the results of Jess’s dyslexia testing (GL assessment). This showed that she may not have dyslexia but we will need to wait for another 12 months so she can be tested again. 12 months is a long time to wait for a child who is already over 18 months behind with her work.

The ‘test’ showed that she has a lot of problems with numbers and single word spelling. We did already know this of course but we still think she could be dyslexic as the problems are quite severe especially where numbers are concerned. As today is the last day of term we are going to show her what home education will be like by giving her work to do over the next 9 days.  Abbie has agreed to work as well to see if Jess will actually work and if I can manage to deal with 2 of them.

If by the end of the half term she seems to be enjoying it and actually working we are going to make a final decision on her joining her sister at home.

Trying To Find A Balance

I’ve always had problem with finding a balance between the house, work, children (and my husband). But, since starting the home educating there’s even more to juggle now.

I’m lucky that I can work (to a certain extent) when I want as I’m self employed. My work away from home is normally evenings and weekends, but I also work online as well. The online work can be done when I’m not ‘needed’ for help with ‘school’ work.

I’m also looking at starting doing a course which will help me with a new job in the future. This will mean finding a few hours to myself each day.

As the child I home educate is 10 and quite able, I can, on the whole, leave her to work. Although this sometimes doesn’t work as well if I am in a different room. and she is doing online work as she gets sidetracked and quite often ends up on games.

Her younger sister is more of a problem. She wants, she thinks, to be home educated as well. But, she doesn’t want to actually work. With decided to do a trial during the school holidays to see if she would do the work. This, again, hasn’t quite worked out. She needs watching every minute of the day. If you leave her alone she stops working.

We have (all) decided that the younger one will go back to school in September but we will carry on working with her after school and weekends. If she can show that she wants to learn we will consider taking her out after the October half term.

I suppose all we can do at the moment is carry on as we are and hope that things slot into a routine by their self.

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HE Resources For Sale

Read condition, £1 each Paper Back

First French at School (Usborne First Languages)
First French on Holiday (Usborne First Languages)
First French at Home (Usborne First Languages)

Collins First Time Spanish Dictionary (Collins Primary Dictionaries)£4 New Paper Back

Collins Primary Illustrated French Dictionary (8-May-2014) Paperback£6 New Paper Back

Letts Basic Skills: Addition & Subtraction Age 9-10: £1 Unused but slightly creased Paper Back

Starting Riding (Usborne First Skills)£1 used but good Paper Back

Disney’s The Lion King Book & CD £3 used but good Hard Back

The Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems £1 used but good Paper Back

The Forgetful Spider Age 4-6 Years £1 Used but good

Used Ladybird Books 50p each

The Wind In The Willows

Two Minute Bunny Tales

Read It Yourself The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Read It Yourself Billy Goats Gruff (names inside)

Unwin Hyman Short Stories – Shorties. A series of short stories with an average of 3 pages each on different genre’s such as Humour, Crime, Sci-Fi, & Supernatural. Authors include Anton Chekhov, Graham Greene, Somerset Maughan & Dylan Thomas. Ex school book. There is a slight musty smell as it’s been stored for years. Paper Back 50p

Unwin Hyman Short Stories – That’ll Be The Day. Ex school book. There is a slight musty smell as it’s been stored for years. Paper Back 50p

IQ Genius – Challenging Questions for 7-11 year olds. Paper Back £1.50 duplicated so unused

NVQ Level 2 Children’s Care, Learning and Development: Candidate Handbook (S/NVQ Children’s Care Learning and Development) Paper Back Used but Good £2.00

The LEGO® Ideas Book Hard Back New £8.00

LEGO® City Ultimate Sticker Collection (Ultimate Stickers) Paper Back New £.4.00

 

LEGO® Minifigure Ultimate Sticker Collection Paper Back New £3.00

Lego Star Wars Character Encyclopedia Hard Back New £8.50

CGP Key Stage One English – about 12 pages had been filled in with pencil, now rubbed out (with varying degrees of success). 50p

By Margaret Gronow Year 1 (100 Mental Maths Starters) (1st Edition)
– unused, a great resource £3

Letts Practice papers – Writing Key Stage 1 – name inside but unused 50p

Investigations and Progression in Science – teaching book showing scientific investigations t key stage 1 and 2. 12 scientific themes are discussed such as weather, light, water, magnetism, floating and sinking, materials & others. A good science resource £1.00

 
Warrior 007 – Samurai 1550 – 1600 Paper Back, like new £3

KS2 Maths Study Book Paper Back No writing inside but a bit tatty from storage £1 SOLD

KS2 Science Question Book (Question Books) by CGP Books (1999) Paperback Never been written in £1.50 

100 Maths Homework Activities for Year 1Paper back, some activities done but in pencil most rubbed out. £1

English age 6-8 years. Over 120 pages, new £2.50

Maths age 6-8 years. Over 120 pages, new £2.50

The Arts Past and Present : Illustration Book. Plates for Books 3 and 4 Please click the link to check this book out. Used but still good, £1.50

Future Nature: A Vision for Conservation.  This would be at least GCSE level, possibly higher. Crease on the front cover and a name inside but good clean condition. £2.50

Counting age 3=5 years. Over 120 pages, new £2.50

Alphabet age 3-5 years. Over 120 pages, new £2.50

Keeping Busy In The Holidays

With a lot less meetings and activities to go to now the summer holidays are upon us I’ve been looking for things to do, free whenever possible. We normally try to avoid going anywhere in the school holidays whenever we can but we can’t hide away for the whole 6 weeks.

Here’s some of the activities I’ve found for the summer:

Apple Summer Camp – Apple Summer Camp is a place where kids aged 8 to 12 bring their imaginations to life. They’ll learn to make movies by storyboarding ideas, shooting video and creating an original soundtrack. Or they can create interactive books complete with their own illustrations and sound effects. Various locations. FREE

Pets at Home stores are running a series of workshops this summer, each focusing on a different animal. Might be of interest to animal lovers. Click on your local shop and then click workshops. FREE

Halfords Bike Workshops – On a regular basis they host a kids’ bike workshop, teaching 7 to 11 year olds basic bike maintenance. FREE

Attend A Free West End Show – During Kids Week, a child aged 16 or under can experience the magic of London theatre and see a fantastic selection of shows for free, plus two additional children can go at half price (per transaction), as long as they are accompanied by a full paying adult. Plus, there are no booking or postage fees to pay!

Robin Hood Festival 3rd to the 9th August – There are daily activities of archery, medieval music and jousting. There will be strolling players, costumed characters and medieval stalls. Falconry displays on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. FREE to get in but £5 parking per car

Tesco Let’s Cook – children learn how to cook great healthy recipes. May well be totally booked up by now but worth checking. FREE

I am also bookmarking a load of online activities to keep them busy:

Camp Google – is a free camp for kids, full of fun science activities

Tesco Eat Happy Project – has a wide range of (mainly) food based activities including video’s games, puzzles, recipes and more

Minecraft – what else is there to say about that?

Then of course there are the outdoor things that are free to do:

Geocaching – This is something we have just started, we found our first one today. Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.

Or simply visit a local park, feed the ducks or go for a picnic 😉

End Of Term – Time For A Decision

We are only just over a week from the end of term and our younger child (7) has decided that she also wants to be home educated. We knew that this would probably happen but we think she is asking for the wrong reasons.

She is very sociable and loves having all her ‘friends’ around her every day. She also likes school! It doesn’t help that her best friend came out of school to be home educated in May, a few days before her sister came out. She also thinks she is missing out on trips out even though she has been on a couple with us (inset days).

I need to think about what will be best for her. It’s also off-putting as when the children are together all they seem to do is argue and that isn’t the best environment to work in.

Camping Out

I have come to the conclusion that I must either be a glutton for punishment or that I am totally mad. I am sat here at 12.45am listening to three 10 year olds and a 7 year old giggling in a tent in the garden. You would think I would have more sense than to double the number of children I’m looking after.

Add to that 2 dogs, one of which was badly injured 4 weeks ago, and the result is mayhem. The injured dog doesn’t think there is anything wrong with her, she did have surgery again 2 days ago, but just wants to play with all these children.

It was organised as a bit of a treat for our 10 year old as she isn’t in school with her friends any more and we want to make sure she doesn’t lose contact with them. Hopefully they might sleep a bit later then normal in the morning as they are up so late.

Well I’m going to bed in a minute, my husband has just got up to take over the ‘night shift’ for the dog. 4 full weeks now of not getting any proper sleep. I am just waiting for the day when all her stitches are out and she has healed.

Success and More Surgery

Our dog went in for more surgery today. Unfortunately the skin didn’t take and has died. The vet pulled more skin over and she now has a Y shaped incision on her side. Fingers crossed that it works this time.

A bit of good news though, our 7 year old, who is still in school at the moment, has finally mastered her times tables. Last week she could only do the ‘easy’ ones, 1s, 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s. After 4 days she has tonight filled in a blank 12 time table grid in 16 minutes. And, they were all correct. 🙂

EHE Letter

We finally got a letter from EHE to acknowledge that she had been taken out of school. It only took 8 weeks 🙂 They have said that they will be in touch shortly to offer a visit from an advisor. I know a lot of people don’t take the visits up but we are quite happy to try it at least once.

7 Weeks Today

Well it’s 7 weeks today since I handed in the de-reg letters and I haven’t murdered her yet :-).

We are almost back to normal with the work. We are following a semi structured approach as this seems to suit her better. I have done a timetable for this week, trying to stick to it is proving harder than I thought. We started this morning with maths and were doing a KS2 SATs practice paper.

I know she is well ahead with her maths anyway and expected it to be no problem. And, it wasn’t apart from finding out she had never done any work with calculating volume. So the next 2 hours which should have been history and art were spent teaching her about volume and pi.

One of the things I am finding most difficult is what work to give her. I already had some books, KS2 science and English and KS3 maths. Then I started searching online resources that were free. Next it was searching for more text books at the car boot sale. I’ve now got a nice mixture of things she can do. I do write out some maths problems for her and I also watch educational DVDs before she watches them so I can write down questions.

I will add a list of the current online resources I use in the next few days.