Is it Christmas yet?

We are tired, the whole family is tired but on we plod. This weekend was lots of fun as the house is now all covered in Christmas stuff (we had to do it in phases so as to not overwhelm anyone) and we went to the Kings Panto in Edinburgh. It was Alladin and amazing! Vee found it scary and loud but within about a minute I put her ear defenders on and then all was well - she loved it, but did need to wear them throughout. We took a picnic for on our laps and had ice cream at the interval, it's great she is now part of the tradition with her older siblings.

                                   

Her school nativity is on Friday, she is a 'townsperson' and she keeps calling it her danceshow. I think I'll give up correcting her, she doesn't understand or get religious festivals anyway but the advent calendar does come in handy for various countdowns. She does love the presents on the big day though...

Reading is coming along nicely although in true style of someone her age, she is memorising a lot of it and/or guessing but she is doing so well.  I am so impressed with how engaged she is in it and how well she tracks. Books are very important in our house, all of our children are read to daily and were from when they were very small. We embrace technology and use a Kindle too now! 

                                    

Pencil grip is still inconsistent and wobbly for her, I am hoping the OT will assess her properly soon, especially before she has to do more written work as I can see this will evolve into an issue like for her older brother and sister. 

                                    

How motivated Vee is as a learner is what makes this all so much easier for her and for me too! She is full of joie de vivre! 

    

       

Christmas is coming!

Vee isn't phased by much, often because she's too busy pottering away doing her own thing. We changed our library day to Friday afternoon last week so we could take her siblings too. The library has workshops on a Friday afternoon and it was making a stretchy snowman. Vee LOVED it. She had a very clear idea of what she wanted to do (which wasn't following the instructions) and I had to do the cutting but her snowman is brilliant! 

                                  

Religious festivals and holidays confuse Vee, well, maybe that's the wrong word -  she isn't fussed about them and doesn't really understand them. BUT she likes to get presents, so that's what we're counting down to and in her advent calendar there are jelly beans, her favourite sweet. 

                                   

School are working towards the nativity on the 12th and Vee is fully involved. She is getting mixed up with the baby Jesus stuff though but is loving all the singing and dancing. This is somehting she has, in the past, struggled with due to the noise but she is taking it in her stride.No Issues with changes to her morning routine but for a child with autism she always has been pretty flexible about things that aren't her idea in the first place! 

This morning's hard work in school learning the dance moves was rewarded with a sticker, which she is very proud of! 

                                 

We Have Been Busy!

A selection of photographs from over the last two weeks: 

                                                                           

  

                                                                           

 

 Vee finds these the easiest way of cutting. 

                                                                           

These are the apps we use most days: 

        

And we use this sing-along app most days too: 

Very First Reading Book

Today is a big day. Vee has come home with her first reading book. She is very excited! 

                                   

As Autumn Ends...

...I have realised a whole month has gone by since I last updated this blog! That is how busy we have been.

We are carrying on with our own routine, which involves doing school work, loosely following what might be happening in the afternoon in school (story time, singing, dancing, handwriting, free play) and exploring the world outside of school, including on the internet. Vee is very enthused about school but she is almost always really tired when I collect her at 12pm and takes about an hour, including lunch, to settle.

Vee doesn't like going to the library as our local one is often really busy with nursery or baby groups, we are going to try a different day or different library. This has been her favourite library book to date however, even more fun for me as I get to put on lots of silly voices! 

Haloween was, as always, about carving pumpkins. Vee enjoys that a lot, especially when deciding what the face will look like. Here is hers and her siblings work: 

In late October Vee spent 72 hours in hospital for video telemetry and EEG, it is suspected she is having nocturnal sezures. She was an absolute star and it didn't stop us learning and doing some work, although she grumbled a LOT more than is usual for her! 

And on we go into "Autumber"!

We have been carrying on with little to report. Vee has had a week off school due to illness and we didn't do a lot of work really although she did go in one day briefly for 30 minutes to meet her p4 buddy. She also made some cards for her lovely nursery 'friends' (the nursery nurse and early years practitioners) as she has been missing them and talking about them. 

The week prior to Vee being unwell we were carrying on with pencil skills, she is really inconsistent with this. The wriiting board has helped with the stability of her grip but some letters she just doesn't get the rule of how to write and others (like 'r') she can do no bother at all. 

To help with this I'm still going over age 3-5 recommended writing skills books and using some of the worksheets her keyworker at her nursery gave me before she left. I want her to continue to getmore comfortable with a pencil in her hand and confident that she can do this: 

I am keeping maths work very basic. We still use hanging up laundry with pegs as a counting exercise as well as a way of helping her pincer grip and wrist strength. I found this Carol Vorderman series Maths book and with help she did really well. Again it's really for pre-school age, in Scotland. 

We did do one worksheet given to us by the class teacher once Vee was on the mend and although she needed help to cut it out she enjoyed sorting into small, medium and large. 

To keep up with school we are continuing using the dinosaur apps and we are chatting about the change of season to Autumn (or as Vee calls it "autumber" which made me laugh outloud) and today we found a lovely conker on the way home from school at lunchtime so we took it home and gave it a wash. I think it has become a pet! 

Week Three.

A new week and some new tasks to get to grips with. School sent children home with their magnetic boards to help learn phonetics (a new letter added daily) and Vee just doesn't take in information in a conventional way so we need to get some assessment of her learning style done formally (she isn't a phonetic learner either). That may be tricky...

We don't do a lot on a Monday afternoon, she is often quite shell shocked almost and incredibly tired. So we did the magnetic board and she then chose to play some games on the computer. Her style of holding the mouse is unique but it works for her and gets the job done! I can leave the room for a few minutes and nothing bad happens, we did have a few missing files in the first week though!

After she had some computer time we had another play on one of the dinosaur apps and she then went off to play with her favourite toys and to relax. 



On Tuesday there was more work on the magnetic board and we practised more base skills for learning handwriting. A few weeks ago I found this wonderful book in Waterstones, I can recommend the Collins range, great for the core skills require to hold a pencil and maintain control. 

 This sort of movement is quite tricky and I was really impressed at the control Vee had once she was focused.

I ordered and received a writing slope this week. Vee's hypermobility and hypotonia (coupled with an interesting pencil grasp) mean it's hard for her to retain control and maintain her writing consistently. We use pencils with a ribbed circular grip to cushion the pressure on her supporting middle finger. 

The Posturite writing slope was really expensive but for us it is worth it as our other two children benefit from using one and use one at their school desk. This thing will never break so we'll be using it for years. Up until now I had been using an A4 ring binder which is sufficient. 

 To round off the week we visited the library on Thursday, we had a chat about the lovely Marigold's on our way in too. Her class go to the library on a Thursday afternoon and as ours is only 10 minutes walk it is a lovely way to end the week (Edinburgh operates a half day on a Friday so no home learning on a Friday afternoon). 

 Vee helped to scan the books she chose using the 'self help' machine after choosing and playing with the library toys!

Week One & Two.

Just to be clear, I'm 'flexi schooling' Queen Vee. We came to this decision mostly because she has siblings in the local school and she had the idea that school is what happens when you are 5! We felt it is a good compromise for now. Her additional needs prevent her being there full days - our catchment school is a heaving mainstream with c670 pupils, plus with the politics of ASL I am not taking chances. I still haven't ruled out home education all of the time or more specialist education for Vee but am happy to trial part time formal education for now.

Early on week one her class went on a trip to the museum first thing so Vee got to have a whole day learning at home. She hates the museum, it's a sensory nightmare for her and actually she has no interest in being there. This coupled with her being unable to walk that distance, deal with being in the building and focussing then the walk back, it was just not right for her.

We started the day later than school time after taking her siblings to school and started with some handwriting. Vee has low muscle tone and a poor pencil grip (hypermobility and hypotonia)  so whilst school will be keeping momentum going at the rate of her peers at home I am working on the basics of moving a pencil about a page and following an instruction. We worked on following a dotted straight line and then some wiggly lines.

Vee's class teacher gave us the 'T' sheet to work on at home, which was good for colouring in and naturally she got the sound and action immediately!

We then moved on to doing some work on dinosaurs, given that's what her class were learning about that day. I already had a vocal and matching app (Dinosaurs World) that my kids have been using for years and so we did that first.

 Then I found this app (Planet Dino) which has puzzles, matching and sequencing games. Vee found it "too loud" but did enjoy with the volume off!

The children in class were learning about numbers 1- 10 so we worked with pegs as I was hanging up washing. This game doubled as good therapy work for Vee's wrist strength too as she pegged up some of the items for me. She was a very willing helper and eager pupil this week.

We continued working on all the above tasks and including work sheets brought home from school I feel we had a very productive and busy week. As we finish week 2 of this journey.


 I feel very happy about this decision and about how motivated Vee is with me as well as with her formal class teacher.

Day 1 - and we're off!

Queen Vee has always amazed me, she is a very special little girl, and not just because of her additional needs. Vee doesn't sleep all night every night like most children so going to mainstream school all day just isn't an option for this little lady - it's teatime at lunchtime for her. Home education for part of the day is going to suit her body clock well and we're quite excited about it too.

This blog will allow us to keep a diary of her progress and we can share our/her journey and any tips we pick up along the way.

Today the kids in her class did their first full day so we started 'learning at home with mummy' in earnest. I collected her at midday and we came home to have lunch. Life skills are very important and Vee is delayed in these skills so her first task after lunch was to choose clothes to wear, get out of her uniform and get dressed. She chose her clothes and then needed considerable support to do the rest. 

Our main task this afternoon was ICT and Vee learned more about using a computer mouse, a skill she started to learn at nursery. Vee uses mostly touchscreens so it was good to cement the skill of using a mouse and connecting that it moves at the end of her hand but the result is on a seperate screen. She was able to use it after a few minutes (she was touching the screen regularly though) then was navigating a website (fun children's games sites Cbeebies and Disney Junior) with minimal support (support she was very grumpy about accepting), then clicking, scrolling and dragging.

Vee then went on to navigate away (websites are saved onto Mozilla 'favourites' bar for ease of access as kids can recognise the favicons) from one site onto another and independently found the TV   programme game she wanted to play. She then successfully clicked and dragged items to make a pirate ship and pirate. She also recognised when promted by a game that she had to type in her name, and promptly did so! She found most keys easily.

Great job, well done! 

Next time we will work on accuracy as her movement are still jerky (understandably) and I hope she will finish when asked. I didn't use a timer today and therefore she was resistent about stopping when I said the activity was finished. Sand timer will be at the ready next time! 

She is at home all day tomorrow as her class mates are going to the museum to learn about dinosaurs so my homework tonight is to find some worksheets online and swot up on dinosaur names and facts!