The week so far

The week didn't get off to a particularly organised start... I was sitting at the computer at 10.40 when I opened my diary and realised I should have been somewhere else at 10.30! Fortunately, the lady I was going to see was very understanding!

We had a good chat about HE, as she is considering it for her son - who I got the chance to meet - and hopefully they will be coming along to our science workshop next week.

Tuesday we headed out to the British Library. Sally, in our group, had organised for us to take one of two workshops - one for the 3-6 and one for the 7-11 year olds. Samuel chose to go in with the younger ones, which worked brilliantly.

Why does home ed suit him? Well, we were out of the house for 6 1/2 hours, he did a one hour workshop - and learnt the meaning of one new word (categories). For him, with his semantic/pragmatic issues, that was brilliant. He learnt in a tangible, hands on way - ideal for the aspergers too - and was able to feel that he was the "cleverest" in the group. He also feels very relaxed with younger ones, and is great at caring for them.

Joshua meanwhile enjoyed being in a small group that meant he could ask questions, and answer them, without too much "turn taking"! He enjoyed showing his knowledge, and really took on board a lot of things; with his love of information and stories I was very pleased to see that he got such value out of the day.

He particularly liked the paradoxymoron painting by Patrick Hughes and was interested in finding out about the science behind it, and other such paintings.

Wednesday I was meant to be resting up, but got rather caught up in some more campaign work! In the afternoon we had some friends over for dinner, to talk about the business we are both in, which was a pleasant end to the day - and another chance for the slow cooker to shine!

I'd also started with Joshua during the day on the Spectrum 7 science book which worked well, with us studying it together. I'm not making him write down the answers to the questions, but chosing which bits to actually turn into something written/tangible. Working with him, like that, it is easy to see if he has "got it" - I don't need written evidence!

Samuel has been working on his website again. I'm very impressed with him. I taught myself html using a fantastic freeware programme called EasyHTML by ToniArts. There are, apparently, new versions of it, but I've kept the old one. I set Samuel up on it, and he is finding it really easy to use. A brilliant success.

Today, of course, the focus was THE SNOW!

Once again I was struck by the contrast between my lads in their "playground"

and the school playground on the other side of the hedge...

The boys had a great time, as it had snowed from around 4.15am until about 10.30am.

Roarke finally got fed up of my not resting, and literally forced me to go and lay on the bed, covering me up, then working on the pc in the bedroom so he could make sure I didn't get back out of bed the moment his back was turned!

To be fair to him, not only have I had a pounding headache all day, which I can't seem to shift, but also the pains have been fairly regular most evenings now for the past week. We think its just because I've been on the pc too much - not a good sitting position.

However, tomorrow, of course, is THE SCAN! I really hope and pray that we will be able to find out whether we have a boy or a girl, as I seriously want to name this child and for the family to start to get to know them. So, think of me at 10.40am tomorrow please....