Hello again-will be rejoining you soon....

[siblingrivalry]

Hi

I am a long time lurker on here, although mostly post on the SN board.
I got some fantastic advice on here 3 years ago, when I took DD1 out of school to HE.

At her request, she returned to a different primary school (very small village school with a strong focus on emotional and social development, so as good as it gets, really).

She has, on the whole, coped better than I expected, but it has still been a very challenging and emotionally draining time for the whole family and we have been on the verge of deregistering her many times.

Anyway, she is currently in Y6 and will not be going to secondary school-in a nutshell because she has AS and needs way more support than she would ever get in the local 1600 place school.
We are all really happy with this decision and very excited about HEing again

I will be working 2 days a week, so DH will be at home with DD1 on those days.

I am currently looking into which approach to take.
The autonomous approach won't suit dd1 (or me!) but she also struggles with very formal teaching. She's a kinaesthetic learner.

I don't really know which subjects (apart from literacy and maths) to do either. I need to drop some stuff because I want to spend a lot of time on her life skills and emotional development-they are my priority at first.

It's all starting to give me a headache, but we will get there

I have a feeling I will be bugging you all with lots of questions over the coming months!

Hi,

From the academic side of things, there are places that do distance learning for KS3, we've just started using Oxford Home Learning for my dd yr8 english. However it is relatively formal work.
We have also used a company called Structured Home Learning that are worth looking at.
I found that for the first couple of years it gave me the confidence to know what sort of things I should be doing and then I would source the books and things I needed from Amazon and similar places.
We do Maths, English, Science, History, Geography, German, Music, Arts and Crafts. I guess for all of us, it's working out which things suit our children best. My kids are very musical so a lot of our week is taken up with music lessons and practices. This obviously wouldn't work for everyone, but for us it's grand :)

Sorry no advice as my children a lot younger than yours, but just wanted to say 'Welcome Back'! :)

C x

Thank you cat-it's really lovely to be back

Emandlu thanks for the information, I will look into it -sound interesting.
DD can cope with formal work up to a point, but needs a lot of flexibility.

I will probably have to have a gradual introduction, to see where she's at. All we have from school are 'levels' which don't mean a great deal to me

Hello gorgeous! Lovely to see you here and really excited to have you and dd back. Won't be long now .

Hi streaky -thank you, can't wait!!

Welcome back! I'm really glad to hear that the whole family are happy about the plan for next year!

"I am currently looking into which approach to take.
The autonomous approach won't suit dd1 (or me!) but she also struggles with very formal teaching. She's a kinaesthetic learner.

I don't really know which subjects (apart from literacy and maths) to do either. I need to drop some stuff because I want to spend a lot of time on her life skills and emotional development-they are my priority at first."

What about a project-based approach? You know, build a scale model of the Pyramids, prepare a mediaeval dinner, design and plant a flower garden, that sort of thing. That could be mainly hands-on and as multidisciplinary as you like. I don't know of any resources or lists of suggested projects but I'm sure there will be some good websites if that appeals to you.

I always think that if we weren't autonomous then that I might go for projects. Probably that is because we could move on whenever the kids were no longer engaged with what they were doing, I wouldn't need a long-term plan and I could sell a certain amount of DIY work as "projects".