Home Schooling.

As it says on the homepage I home educate Tom as his medical needs are too great for him to attend regular special needs school. I love spending everyday with Tom as he is such great company and together we have a lot of fun. I wanted to share with you how I structure Toms 'school day'.

I work with Tom four days a week between the hours 9am-6pm. These are seen as Tom's 'school days'. As most children attending school study from around 9am to 3pm I wanted to try and replicate this at home for Tom.

I ensure that Tom has a predictable but not boring routine for him to follow. I wanted to make sure he would be able to predict what would be happening throughout the day so that nothing takes him by surprise. Tom has a feeding and physio routine that he has followed long before I met him, so of course this fits into his school day as it is a huge part in maintaining his health.

The mornings are normally a little slower as we like to ease Tom into the day and get him prepared. We do physio and teeth cleaning, face washing and hair brushing. We then tend to do some reading or play with a switch toy. These are nice chilled activities to get Tom in the mood for 'school'.

Lunchtime is where it all happens, if the weather is nice we will go for a walk to the beach, around the zoo, the theatre or the pottery shop. These places are all super wheelchair friendly! If we do not go out Tom will do something along the lines of messy play, sensory play, eye gazing, painting or craft. Tom loves doing really messy activities, sometimes they even send him off to sleep! At the end of every messy activity Tom gets a sensory foot bath to wash his feet or hands. We use the Body Shops bubble bath bars. These are only available at Christmas so we make sure we stock up!

After lunchtime Tom will always stand, the luxury of him being home schooled is that he can stand for a minimum of 1 hour every day at any time that suits him. In the standing frame we will do a messy activity, followed by sensory hand bath. I like to make standing really fun as it is a strenuous activity so I try to distract him. Tom loves standing and this is great as it is so important for his health but it is also lovely that he can be upright and we can stand next to each other.

After standing it all starts to calm down, Tom's most favourite time of the day, foot spa time! After Tom has had some physio he then has his dinner in his P pod. Whilst Tom is on his dinner he has a sensory foot spa everyday! Again we use the Body Shops Christmas bath bombs. I also put some lights on for him and these are really relaxing. Tom will often sleep during his foot spa, we call it 'Tom's Zen'. It is so important for him to have downtime as he works so hard in the day. Any other child when they come home would have some time in front of the telly on the sofa or play a game to relax so I see this as Tom's equivalent.

This is just a short little insight into Tom's 'school day'. Please get in contact if you home school a child, feel free to share ideas on what you get up to and the places you go! I always love getting new ideas and trying them out with Tom.

Over the next few blog posts I am going to write about some of the messy play ideas we have come up with and some of the places we have been this week so please keep your eyes peeled.