Conversations on Twice Exceptional Homeschooling
This is the cake I make all the time. I don’t need to look at a recipe anymore, it’s so automatic. I use this cake-base as a start for pretty much all my cakes and cup-cakes – just add other flavours – banana, dates, cinnamon, raspberry, apples or blueberries. It works beautifully.
This cake is lovely just as it is, but is also lovely iced, or turned into a cinnamon tea cake. Continue reading “Basic Gluten-Free Vanilla Cake”
This is a guest post from my husband. He and C are the chief chef’s for this recipe. All I can say is that this is on very high rotation at our house. Over to him!
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| Coconut Pancake Stack |
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This recipe came about through experimentation, desperation, and the inspired input of a 3 year old. We call it pancakes. The finished product is probably technically closer to a pikelet (around 10cm in diameter and about 6mm thick). So I hope the purists out there don’t get too upset. I have no idea just how thin you could get this and have it still remain a coherent pancake, so they shall be pancakes in name.
The following recipe feeds two adults and two small bottomless pits on legs, and there might be some left over if the little ones aren’t completely ravenous.
Assuming you use the plain pancake recipe, then a good topping is a fruit smoosh (name coined by C at age 3). For a smoosh, you basically cook diced fruit in a little butter for as long as it takes for the juices to release a little and the fruit to warm through. Continue reading “Pancakes and Fruit Smoosh”
There is quite a difference between the way I thought I would teach chemistry compared to the way C prefers to learn. C is very visual-spatial in his thinking. He absorbs knowledge when he can see it and touch it. He doesn’t mind listening, but he can’t just listen – there has to be a visual component, or lots of space to wiggle and jump around. And when he’s excited by a new idea he gets very loud! Which is a joy. He also loves to play with an idea – to absurdity if possible.
This makes putting together a chemistry curriculum in the more formal way a problem. But it also gives us great scope for experimentation. Afterall, where else can you go? Continue reading “Putting Together A Chemistry Curriculum”
My little girl, J is a funny girl sometimes. Recently, when we took C to his physio session at the hospital, we had to share the room with another therapist and patient. J loves these ‘go Doctor’ sessions, as she calls them – there’s lots of cool toys, and she usually has Mummy running around after her while C ‘plays’ with the therapist. This time, she spent her time watching the other patient – a teenage girl with motor problems – grab toys from one location and crawl to another to put it in a circle. Suddenly J wasn’t next to me, but had raced forward to join the other girl – grabbing toys and putting them in the circle. I quickly sped forward and scooped her up, exclaiming,
‘I know it looks like a lot of fun, but it’s the big girl’s turn now.’
The other girl and therapist laughed and J went back to playing with her toys and copying and bugging her brother.
It was only after the session that it hit me. This is J’s normal. She has spent her life going in and out of doctors’, therapists’, and specialists’ waiting rooms. It’s been like that from the very beginning, even in the womb.
Continue reading “Normalising Disability”
In this third part on our convoluted journey to homeschooling, I’d like to talk about what twice exceptional means – and a bit about what it feels like to parent such kids!
This is not meant to be a definitive guide for people trying to discover more about twice exceptional kids. This is just our personal journey, and a few of the curious signposts along the way.
Continue reading “Homeschooling My Gifted Kid, Part 3: The Twice Exceptional Wrinkle”