Today Wednesday 20th April 2011 and it was a day of learning through life for our three. Due to Thomas having a doctors appointment first thing I planned a through life education for today to take the strain off.
Having ADHD and ASD an appointment in the day means chances of anxiety and getting stuck in waiting mode. So naturally nothing got done before his appointment.

After we were done at the doctors, we popped to Tesco. This is where they helped me by count up how much money our shopping was going to cost.

Maths in life!

Items brought and their costs the children had to work with:

  • Emily’s new Sandals £8
  • Toms New baseball Cap £4
  • Jessica’s Baseball Cap £4
  • Toms New Sun Glasses £3
  • Jessica’s Sun Glasses £3
  • Emily’s Sun Hat £1
  • Emily’s Baby Sun Glasses £2

Thomas did it in his head, he has a real natural talent for numbers so finds this the easiest way. However, Jessica added it up with counting beads as maths for her is much harder. She used her counting beads. These are bracelets in different colours with beads on. one smaller than the other.

They both use completely different styles that suit the way their brains work and both got it right at £25.

Cooking and Home ed group Prep.

Once home we continued the journey of learning through life by cooking the Easter cakes ready for the Stonehenge Home Educators Group. With a little help from my friends girls we got all 30 Easter cakes made in a mass cooking lesson.

Including more maths in the form of weighing out the ingredients based on how many cakes we needed. The recipe they had chosen was for 12 cakes and we needed 30.

Therefore they had to work out how much they would need to increase the measurements to have enough mix. They ended on 3X and slightly larger cakes than recipe allows for.

They then measured it all out and mixed it all together and while the cakes cooked and cooled they started planning the decorating.

Cake decorating!

They choose to do 3 different coloured sets of Butter icing. I personally Hate butter icing but it was their choice.

As expected it was horrible to work with, As one of the children couldn’t have the cream cheese icing I would normally choose to work with they decided they would battle the butter icing.
They had great fun, they cheated a little and used my electric piping machine to make patterns and decorate the tops.

Handwriting in the Bath?

Having come to the end of the day I still wanted to get in some reading and writing. What better way to do this than at bathtime?

While their bath Ran we sat down and read a little of Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout.

Then with the help of bath crayons they did some handwriting practise. between them they wrote a little story around the edge of the bath based on todays adventures.

Days like these with two young Neuro divergent kids can be hard and too demanding on them. However, it is easy to turn what could have been a hard day around with a little thinking outside the box.

All in all we had a fantastic day and both were very on the ball today. Every sum Thomas was given he got right. Jess is managing to do easy addition really well now too with the help of her counting beads.

Jessica’s Struggles with Dyslexia and learning:

Jessica is a visual learner and I have found she finds this easier with visual aides to do maths with. So making her the travel beads has worked wonders. (2023 update: apologies the pictures have gone missing with the change in blog hosting services but I will makes some more soon and do a blog on it and add pictures)

Emily’s Counting beads bracelet different to Jessica’s as their needs varied.

I have also found taking the spelling strains off Jessica helps her with her creative writing too. She can now help to make her own story as long as she has something solid to work from.

She can’t seem to make stories up but I am not too worried about this at the moment today we manage to encourage her to write a whole sentence sounding the words out to spell them.

There is still a big resistant to reading and we have asked our EHE for a referral for testing for Dyslexia

In the meantime I will have to learn more about teaching dyslexics and just keep trying different ways to teach her. hopefully assessment will be soon and they cab offer where to find Dyslexia friendly styles and aides.

Never the less the progress she is making in her creative writing is really pleasing to see.

I have them both using the finger technique for remembering to put a space after each word and that makes such a difference. More and more she is remembering the spaces without needing to be reminded.

If you would like to read about the Finger Technique or writing in the bath please check out this post here

To read more about their activities with Sif or any other Paid activities you can find them here.