Like feathr.

Reading and writing have never been Jack's strong points at school. He keeps up just fine but he works quite slowly compared to other types of work, like math. It's never been much of a concern because he's still toward the top of his class, the quality of his work is near perfect it's just notably slowly produced. The teachers, as well as us, have always just put it down to Jack's tendency toward perfectionism.

Earlier this week Helen stated that Jack had some news on the reading and writing subject. Jack informed me that he'd been given something to help him with his reading, a couple small coloured overlays, red and yellow.

Jack is thrilled. He says it's making reading much easier, the letters are much clearer and he can read much quicker. Since having received these he's seems to have soared to the top of the class. He's now reporting that he keeps finishing first, or is the only one who finished. He told me that read a 32 page book yesterday.

So, it's looking like Jack is possibly dyslexic. It's still a tad early to say for certain. With him being so young it could just be mistaking a lack of focus as Irlen Syndrome. The problem is that if you ask a six year old child if the letters are hard to see they'll pretty much just say yes. If out put coloured paper in front of them and ask if that's better they'll just say yes. So the diagnostic process can be somewhat challenging. But being that dyslexia is hereditary and I'm dyslexic, two of my brothers and my father are as well, so the odds are against him.

There isn't a problem with him possibly being dyslexic, my only concern is that from now on we'll have to deal with endless teaching enabling plans and teachers that treat him like he's a little slow. Dyslexia is largely considered a learning disability and as soon as you label a child as having a learning disability, the safety scissors and circles of paper come out. It can be a frustrating world to find yourself in especially when you're every bit as clever, if not cleverer, that everyone else in the class and you know it, yet the teachers still declare you lazy, or vacant, or thick headed.

Irlen Syndrome is easiest described as an eye problem. Due to the way the brain processes visual information coming in from the eyes, distortions can appear making reading difficult, or impossible. Irlen Syndrome is not exclusive to dyslexics, in fact the association between them is not accepted by many. I don't suffer to much from Irlen Syndrom myself, only with certain colour schemes or when I'm tired I see shadows or bars over the text. I just have virtually no reading comprehension at all and reading just wears me out.

So we'll keep an eye on how Jack gets on over the next few months and try to get better idea of what's really going on. Until then I'm happy that his enthusiasm for reading and writing seems to have been renewed. He'll be be allowed to bring his overlays home shortly, which he's also excited about, and we've ordered some of our own overlays, I'm also going to install iOverlay on his iPod. I really hope that we can help him learn to enjoy reading rather than letting him grow to dread it like I did, we're going to do everything that we can.

You can find out more about Dyslexia and Irlen Syndrome on those links.

Homeworkin

Jack now has a homework box and this weekend it contained one homework. Jack is less thank thrilled with the idea of having even more work to do at home, we make him practice reading and math.

The homework assignment is for him to write some information about owls.

Jack flying a Harris Hawk

Jack was a little apprehensive about this assignment until he spoke to us about it. Then we reminded him of the many photos we have.

As a family we know a lot about birds of prey. We've seen all types of birds and are quite well versed on their strengths of weaknesses. As a family we know lots of specialist facts about raptors, for instance an owl will have eye colour to match it's most active times, owls with black eyes are nocturnal, yellow means active during the daytime (diurnal) and orange for dawn and dusk (crepuscular). They have very little control over their feet, they can basically grab on to something and that's it. This creates a problem known among falconers as sticky feet, where when the bird is taking flight its feet don't always let go properly right away and the bird sticks to the branch or glove for a moment. Owls also can't move their eyes.

Orange eyes.

Just like dogs, different species of raptor have different personalities. Eagles seem to be quite stubborn and grumpy. They only like one person to fly them and they generally don't like that very much. I saw a golden eagle boycotting her perch at the end of a flying session during which his falconer had with withheld the rewards due to a poor performance. Vultures can be quite thuggish. Every time we see a vulture we hear about how it's recently been beaten up by another (usually a female).

We've seen an eagle that liked to be scratched just so on the back of his head, (birds don't normally like to be touched) and a condor that moulted only the feathers on one side rendering himself completely flightless. We met a snowy owl who had a real crush on one of the falconers who looked strangely like Daniel Radcliffe and a Lappet-Faced Vulture that turns his face pink with excitement at the mere sight of a particular falconer.

We probably go to four or five raptor displays a year.

For quite a while we were considering acquiring our own raptor but decided against it in the end.

So after some reminiscing Jack and I jotted down three facts and popped in pictures of his favourite owl, the Northern White Faced who has the most amazing defence mechanism ever. Jack received an extra point for his work.

I don't need your stupid perch.

A melanistic Barn Owl, one of the rarest birds in the world.

Little did Jack know, that owl just pooed on him

The Northern White Faced Owl.

Bring out your junk

Every so often Jack's class starts a project where they build something. Letters will go out a few days before and Jack will usually mention in passing that we've got to supply the materials. Mostly the materials they ask for is junk i.e. clear plastic bottles, bottle tops or half an egg shell.

The problem I have with this is that Jack often suggest and sometimes will insist on keeping a hold of junk so that he can create things at home. And it's very difficult to get him to get rid of things as it is, he's very, very sentimental. The school seems to think that we just have endless supplies of product packaging hanging around the house. I have the tendency to hoard things if I'm not careful. I hang on to software, electronics and documents like it's made of gold (I suppose some of it is), I generally just hate throwing that kind of stuff away. But I don't hold on to cardboard boxes, bottle tops and pringles tubes just in case I (or Jack) are feeling creative. I dread when shows like Art Attack come onto the TV because it's impossible to get the exhibited projects out of Jack's head.

The latest is a musical instrument, after which they will be making a lighthouse. Thankfully Jack was only interested in making maracas and I love pringles so it was a good excuse.

I don't want to quash Jack's fascination with artistic recycling. I love to see him create things, anything at all really. Every creation is a little hint to how is mind works and is developing. Just ask him, he can make virtually anything out of a cardboard tube, sellotape and a piece of string. He wants to make robots when he grows up and I will do whatever I can to help him get there, but I'd like to do it without a house full of trash.

Perhaps I'l teach him to program, then he can make things that take up less physical space.

Maths

07-07-2013

For the past five weeks I've been attending a maths class at Jack's school. The purpose of this class is two fold. First: to give parents an idea of what math techniques the kids are being taught in school and how they are being taught them. Second: to help parents brush up on their maths as well, it's a practical skill after all, and encourage them to enrol on a math course at their local college.

Now, I don't suggle with math, not only have I been knee deep in advanced calculus and trigonometry for the last three years, but I've always been good at math. I only struggle when the math involves being written down. I like math. I like it because of the solidarity, the right answer is the right answer, it's not down to any interpretation.

I enrolled for this class knowing that the way that I was taught math in school was very different to the way Jack was being taught. I thought that it would be good for the future when I will undoubtedly need to help Jack with his math homework. With an overview if how he's been taught I should be more equipped to help him. Also the kids got to join us for the last half hour of the class, when Jack heard about this he was pretty insistent.

The class was good over all, I spent most of the class whizzing through the work and then helping the others, or giving brief lectures on things like the Monty Hall problem. What struck me most is that Jack is being taught techniques that I used to get into trouble for doing. Number bonds, for instance, I became quite notorious in my class for using number bonds to do math in my head, though I didn't know it at the time, it was just how I did it. In 7th grade I got bumped ahead into pre-algebra (9th grade) only to fail it spectacularly and get pushed back into the math class that was for the slow 8th graders. Number bonds, place values, and other similar techniques are the main cause for this failure. I could do the math in my head, but they wanted it on paper. If I did it on paper I got it wrong or got lost.

Now a days schools in Britain have realised the value of being able to do math in your head and are trying to teach it from as early an age as possible. All the written techniques that I was taught are not taught until year 6 or later. Some of them, like touch points, aren't even taught anymore.

Throughout the course I learned all of the terms and techniques that he's going to be taught over the next six years and already I can see their use. Jack and are regularly doing little math problems and it's changed a lot lately now that I can encourage him to use what he's been taught, we're a lot more productive and it's one more thing that we can do and enjoy together.

Parent's Evening on my own

Helen had to work this year which left me to attend parents evening solo. I'm not good at this sort of thing. I never ask enough of the right questions and I forget the answers anyway. Usually my handling things like this on my own result in Helen booking an additional appointment later on.
This time, knowing that I was on my own I mentally prepped and practiced some questions.

The conversation was light, generally the teacher is very happy with Jack. He's in the top group for math, and reading, and he's in the second to top group for writing. He's got lots of friends and always tried his hardest, so much so in fact that he quite often is trying to make his work so perfect that he doesn't finish. He's very competitive but doesn't get himself down if he loses. He's very articulate (no surprise there) and he's become quite famous for knowing strange things, like the inner workings of black holes, the speed of sound and the number and functions of pi.

It wasn't all praise though, Jack needs to work in his penmanship. Aside from that, I was very proud to be his parent that evening.

After the meeting with his teacher I went into the class room to take a look at some of Jack's workbooks. I sat myself in a corner upon a tiny chair and took my time with each book. The workbooks were full of barely legible writings and occasional comments from the teachers. I made mental notes to ask Jack what some of the teachers scribed icons meant, one if which is a smiley face with an empty speech bubble, (apparently this means that the teacher has spoken to Jack about it). There were lots of positive comments from the teachers and the occasional reminder that he needs to listen more carefully.
Jacks math was very good, there were some pretty complicated sums in the book and he had the correct answer most of the time.

As I neared the end of the book I came across this picture, it really made me smile.

Dear Dad,
My special gift to you is...
I will help you make the apps.
Love Jack.

The Christmas Play

12-12-12
This morning we attended Jacks Christmas play.

It was interesting to see the evolution of the class. Last year the play was painfully stretched to 30 minutes, there were a few tonelessly sung tunes and a script read or shouted out a sentence at a time by the children. The dancing consisted of the kids walking around the stage and waving their arms. The costumes were mostly just variations of painted pillow cases.

This year the singing, while it was backed up with a tape of a children's choir, was much closer to pitch. The costumes were good, the stars looked like stars and the angels looked like angels. The three kings costumes were complete with sunglasses due to the luminescence of the star they had to follow. There were props, scenery and choreography and dare I say it, acting, from the inn-keepers wife especially.

The cast was made up of around 80 children from years 1 and 2 and each of them had a part to play. The play was Jesus's Christmas party, which was a slightly comical take on the nativity scene. Essentially a huge party gradually amasses in the stables under the noses of the surly innkeepers. There were a number of genuinely funny moments. My favourite of which is when Joseph sheepishly disturbs the innkeepers asking for another blanket, baby sized.

Jack was a mouse that got put to sleep by a bunch of angles very early on in the play. He came out and danced in a sleepy way, then lay on the floor for a few minutes, we were very proud. Jack took the roll quite seriously, he practiced the songs at home when he thought that we weren't listening and he warned us that mommy might cry during the last song, pretty much all of his teachers had cried at some point over the performances because of this particular song.

We were impressed, proud and still glad when it was over. Helen didn't cry.

Our mouse.

Back to school

It's been a very busy summer.

Camping has again been the theme of the summer. We camped with friends at Clarach Bay for a week, we camped at Longleat for four days, and in Essex for four days for Jack's cousin Thomas's birthday.

a crab we caught at Clarach Bay, poor thing had no pincers.

Clarach Bay was good. It's a sea side campsite down in Wales where there's beaches and rock pools and little amusements for kids. Aberystwyth is just a few minutes drive where we went for a wander. We also stopped by a little town called Borth where their annual carnival was on. The weather was unpredictable, but generally good and there were three other families with us. All in all it's one of the best camping trips we've been on.

wild seals at Cardigan Bay

A week or so later we headed down to Longleat for a four day stay. Longleat Safari and Adventure park was great. We got a two day pass and we still didn't manage to do everything on offer.

We went to a gymnastics birthday party in Essex. Now and strange a theme for a birthday party as it may sound it was actually a lot of fun. Basically they took all the kids into a fully equipped gym and let them loose. They had trampolines and balance beams and rings and poles and everything. But with all that around the best part of it turned out to be the chips. Big yellow foam block in a pit designed to catch those who fall off the rings an such. Most of the fun of the party was jumping in an out of them, and throwing others in.

DON'T FALL IN THE CHIPS!

Now summer is over and Jack and I are both headed back to school. Jack is moving into year 1 and I'm moving on to the top-up BSc award.
Jack was apprehensive about going back to school. He didn't think that there was going to be any fun in his new class. He's met his teacher and seen the classroom and despite that, and our constant reassurance, Jack is convinced that his days of having fun at school are over. There's no Mobilo, his favourite building set,  in Year 1, there's no Star of the Day, there's no fun to be had anywhere. On a much more unconscious level Jack is also concerned about the change in routine. He keeps a little itinerary in his head and anything that disrupts it is feared and avoided at all costs. The lack of information about the new classes minute by minute activities really stresses him out.
Often just broaching the subject would be enough to being tears to Jack's eyes and tension to his body. After all moving to year 1 means that he's growing up. Growing up means change, and Jack doesn't like change.

I'm less apprehensive. Through the use of my internet researching school and knowledge of the inner workings of the university's online reporting tool I've managed to have a look at some of my upcoming modules and it looks bleak. Each module is harder than the last, and my optional modules are worse. I'm sure it's not going to be as bad as it looks and I'm looking forward to it.

Here's a bunch of photos.

Jack got to hold a snake.

His new teddy bat

this bird was moving full at speed and straight at me.

Jack and I got to hold and emperor scorpion

Alton Towers' gardens. Jack wanted me to take a picture.

I'd never seen an ant eater before.

This lemur walked right up to us.

very noisy sea lions.

Ready for school