Sam was still up early and in full on 'badger the life out of mother ' mode. At one point I am lying on the floor doing my exercises and he's straddled across me firing questions at my forehead. I tell him to leave me to finish what I am doing and I will be with him in five minutes. Nope....does not compute. Eventually, after repeating my self several times, I have to ignore him. Blokey walks past and hands an iPad to Sam, this enables me to not only finish my work out but also have a shower.
Once armed with a coffee I settle Sam down into his maths lesson...it's still only 7:15am. There's a bit of faffing around due to glitches as I set it all up and Sam grows increasingly restless. Eventually, we are good to go but he is very annoyed that things weren't straight forward.
Once settled into his work he enjoys it as usual. We then move on to looking at 'The Shadow' a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. I explain how poetry is written differently. We do some comprehension and then Sam copies a part of the poem into his work book.
He then goes off to play around with some coding whilst I try and motivate Owen...
....this takes some time. He's in a truculent and evasive mood.
Fast forward past the scowling and procrastination...
Owen works on RM maths.
He then tells me he 'knows everything about poetry'....2 mins into the work, I beg to differ. On we continue, he goes off topic frequently, I consider making a noose.
Despite all the theatrics Owen proves once more that he is really improving with his comprehension. Somehow, we get to this point.
Next it's Spanish. Sam and I work hard whilst Owen does an impression of a dying swan on the sofa.
We struggle on, trying to ignore him...he dies louder. The joys of having two children with different needs at different times. Sam wants to work hard right now, Owen wants me to set up a couch and listen to all the reasons that he feels, every living creature has wronged him, in his brief time on the earth. I am expected to do these things simultaneously, whilst washing, cleaning and cooking them a delicious meal...I am also expected to be ruddy cheerful about it at all times. Would you like to hazard a guess at how that is going right now? ...aaarrrghhhh!
When all this is done, the battle commences to get Owen washed and in clean clothes. After a good run last week, he's decided enough is enough and reverts to 'I have rabies and fear water'. He pretended to have a shower but forgets to put the shower on. So that, and the fact he isn't wet, kinda makes me challenge his standpoint. We try again. This time he manages and his teeth are brushed too. Just his pet to look after next. By lunch time everything on the 'essential' list is done and I want to go back to bed. Procrastination city Arizona.
Sam has started a project on animation, he's wanting to use Minecraft figures and is very excited. He comes down regularly to give me a progress report. He's following a YouTuber who does this and is learning how to use the software that way. Sam explains that sometimes the work is so familiar to the YT guy, that he doesn't remember explain all the details Sam needs. So he's persevering and working out those bits out for himself.
It's a frosty, but beautiful start to the day and I do a quick lap of the village at sun up. This really makes a difference to my mental health, so I try and keep it up, even on weeks where I am very tired.
Sam has been up since 5:30am and drew me a lovely picture.
Next we start a new lesson using the Owl and the Pussy Cat for our comprehension.
He loves it and we practice the lines together.
Owen is up and about early and decides to take up my recommendation about looking after his snail and completing his hygiene routine whilst Sam is working with me. I have explained this will speed up the work and means he has less to worry about later. Today he happily takes me up on the suggestion ( faints with shock) and by the time he finishes, I have a cooked breakfast and his maths session set up and waiting. His egg is perfect and he eats it whilst we work on RM. I wipe dippy egg off the iPad screen.
He is beginning to realise that holding the paper as he writes, helps steady his work. Three years of me saying ..'hold the paper love' ...but now he believes me. Although, tomorrow that may all change.
We then read the Owl and the Pussy Cat, he also gets a great deal of pleasure from the peice and we talk about Runcible spoons etc. He enjoys learning the new words in the passage and again impresses me with his verbal comprehension.
Later we get a lift to our regular meet up and see friends. It's a perfect day to sit outside and play whilst the adults have a natter. When we got home the boys run off to the park because their local mates were home from school.
Next morning Sam was up early as usual. When I came down from my shower he had decided to work on Conquer Maths. It wasn't on our to do list for today, he just felt like doing some extra. Once I had a coffee in my hand ( it's medicinal people), he chose to look at dinosaurs on Mystery Science. Today we compared Sam's speed to a dinosaurs. This involved measuring his running stride and comparing it on a graph to various dinosaurs. He is pretty quick and enjoyed looking at the different speeds. Although he was faster than quite a few I pointed out that he may not be able to sustain his speed for a longer period.
He then decided to look at more dinosaur lessons, using the same curriculum. Both boys are enjoying this format of work because it's mainly visual.
He then watched a video on how to look at animal skull to determine whether they were, carnivores, herbivores or omnivores. He got them all correct and went off to watch more Bill Nye programmes, whilst I helped Owen.
Owen learnt about different types volcanoes using Mystery science, then we rounded up Sam and did some Spanish.
It's Blokeys rota day off and we decide to try somewhere new. As a friend had recently recommended the Crocky Trail, we braved the rain ( figuring it would be quieter) and give it a go.
There were loads of activities to try and we started off with the trail.
And different types of swings using ingenious pulley systems and levers. We all had fun testing them out, guessing what scrap parts they were made of, and figuring out how they worked.
More balancing poles
My injuries meant I couldn't even get on the darn thing!
We had a thoroughly brilliant time and afterwards grabbed a late lunch in a nearby pub. Back home the boys went to the park and played with their local friends until dinner time.
Sam is still having sleep issues, so I had contacted his consultant. We have to try him off his meds for a couple of days, to see if this is exacerbating his sleep problems. He's very unhappy about it but we can't try other options until we have ruled this possibility out. Despite taking him for a 4km walk, he's still very hyper and it makes for a very difficult day and an unsettled household.
As he's very hyper and Owen isn't coping very well with the noise and spinning, we go for a bike ride and stop at the park.
In the afternoon Blokeys friends pop in before he goes off to the cinema to see the new Alien film. The afternoon goes quite well ( I had been dreading it TBH) but the evening rapidly descends into chaos and we are relieved when the boys are finally tucked into bed. Sam sleeps well again and hope his marvellous consultant can offer some suggestions to help next week.
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