Conversations on Twice Exceptional Homeschooling
For the next few days, instead of doing my usual will-I-survive-the-day routine, I’m at the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children Conference in Sydney!
I have given up wandering around our typical haunts, and I’m getting lost on the University of NSW’s campus instead. Hopefully I’ll find the conference location. It’s going to be a lot of fun – and I’m a little excited (and nervous).
Outliers. Sometimes, I forget that may kids are way out there at the margins.
It’s so easy for me to forget what ‘normal’ looks like, or to forget the assumptions usually made about the innate range of abilities of most children.
In my friend-circles, I clap, cheer and cry when other families have their child engaging in conversation for the first time after months of therapy, or get excited when another family talk about the crazy conversation they had with their primary-schooler on infinity and prime numbers.
My crazy-normal has become very . . . skewed.
Continue reading “Our Crazy Normal of Twice-Exceptionality”
When trying to figure out what my kids can do for their homeschooling, it can be very easy for me to get carried away – grand plans, high expectations and all that, and when the unexpected happens, like a sudden illness, it can feel like everything is falling apart. Finding both the energy to keep going as well as the inspiration to keep planning when I’m house-bound from a long-term illness has been a challenge, but there are things I have learned about how to manage and still make homeschooling a wonderful experience for everyone.
Here are some of the things I have done.
Continue reading “Homeschooling Through Long-Term Illness”
“What is it like to be on ADHD Medication?”, a friend asked me the day I started.
For me? It was a huge mental difference. Not a ‘high’, but a zen calm. It’s the feeling you would get after sitting down after a long hike up a mountain to visit a sub-tropical rainforest spring.But that’s only part of it. Because it’s hard to describe without also understanding what living without medication is like. Until I started, I had no idea either. I mean, I had read about the external symptoms and I’d ticked enough boxes to get myself to a specialist. But I didn’t really understand.
In fact, when I asked the specialist, in my usual worried way, “How will I know if it’s working?”, he’d smiled at me and said, “You will know.” I swear, I heard a Yoda-like cadence there, too.
One of the great joys about homeschooling is the ability to pull in different resources and the freedom to explore all the different rabbit holes of knowledge. For us, maths is not limited to what is prescribed in text-books, but is a fundamental way of seeing the world around us (hello two maths majors in the family – my kids don’t stand a chance).
Here are some of our favourite maths resources – that both teach and inspire kids to learn and understand maths. Continue reading “Homeschooling Maths Resources”