Home Education

Dyslexia Testing

Lydia An Adults View ,

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.

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End Of Term – Time For A Decision

Lydia An Adults View

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

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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.

7 Weeks Today

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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.

Owl Pellets

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Yesterday Abbie took apart some owl pellets which were found when walking the dogs. Before she started she did some reading on the internet and soaked them in water for a while with a little disinfectant and wore latex gloves all the time she was handling the pellets.

She’d read that she was most likely to find bones, teeth, fur and feathers so she was quite excited to see if there was a skull. Unfortunately all she found was tiny pieces of bone and fur. Luckily she still found it interesting and wants to do more.

These are a couple of the photo’s she took.

 

First HE Meeting

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I went to my first HE meeting last night, adults only at a pub (first time I’ve been out in years). It was nice to have a talk with 2 other people who are home educating. Looking forward to more events and meeting more people.

My 10 year old has started another blog (just about her life now) and this is one line from today’s post. “since i have been taken out of school my behavior has improved especially towards my sister”. It’s nice to know that she is thinking like that.