Arts, Rocks, Reading and Chaos

Josh is now back at SAVVY. His arts award stuff is coming along, but very slowly. He's running out of time to get it completed before the end of the period (November). Its very hard trying to get the balance between autonomous learning - not interfering or taking over - and encouraging him and keeping him on target.

William has made some amazing progress this week with his reading. In true autonomous style, he's done it via Club Penguin! It seems that on Club Penguin, if you go to the Town, and into the Cafe, upstairs there is a Library where you can "take a book out" and read it. The idea is that you type the words to turn them from grey to black, and every now and again you can select one of two words to go into the story. Despite not being able to read, he has been trying to do this. He sits and tries every key on the keyboard until he finds the right one.

Now, his keyboard on the laptop of course is in capitals, so hardly any of them look like the letters on the screen. This means he's having to learn his capitals at the same time.

We decided a few weeks ago that we would stop focusing on the alphabet; why does he need to know the alphabet? I don't mean why does he need to know the letters, but why does he need to know the order?

Think about it.

Other than being able to recite it, or use it for codes, why do you need to know it?

Surely today it is more relevant to know the order of the keys on a keyboard!

Anyway, this means that we are more than happy for him to have found this way, that is relevant to him, of learning his letters. It has really worked! He watched an episode of SuperWhy with Jonathan in the evening and successfully called out every one of the "super letters" on the screen - which are all in capitals. That's the first time we've ever heard him get them right.

There's that autonomous learning again :-)

Today we had a nice morning out in Tunbridge Wells. We went to Wellington Rocks. Jonathan proved once again that he has no fear, and every confidence in himself, by charging off to climb straight up the rocks after his brothers. Poor old Roarke was kept on his toes trying to keep up with him, let alone one step in front!









We then got a portion of chips for everyone and drove home, because Roarke was expecting to have to go into London for a costume fitting for an advert that he is short listed for. The call never came, but we spent the rest of the afternoon not sure what was happening from one minute to the next!

I've almost finished our new family website. It is mainly so that I have someone to tell our home ed story, and also somewhere to put our gluten free recipes that people ask me about. Let me know what you think :-)

Tomorrow we are, to say the least, over booked. I am meant to be doing the shopping then going to the home ed meeting. Roarke is meant to be working in Orpington. However if he gets his call, he'll have to go to London. We are also meant to be meeting our MP in the evening (he kindly gave us 24 hours notice).

The weekend is equally as busy. Again, Roarke is either working in Orpington or, if he gets this part, filming somewhere on Saturday. Sunday is our church Community Day with a hog roast for the adults and a barbeque for the kids, then straight across to my brother's for his birthday party!

Oh and we had a house guest overnight Saturday!