Starting Over

I seem to have hit upon some sort of scheduley arrangement for our school day that would appear to be kinda-sorta working. As much as anything can work with a kid who is constantly bouncing of the freaking walls.

F-Man is a dude who needs structure. Or to be doing exactly what he is interested in. Then its all good. No structure = complete and utter chaos and several meltdowns (mostly mine).  So I wrote up a School Day Schedule for him, dividing the day up into roughly half hour segments:

• online lesson
• food/free play
• OT
• specific school-focussed bookwork
• lunch break/free play
• a learning activity from our big list of fun things to do
• some more OT 
• and finally some literacy or reading aloud

Having a plan is giving us a focus for the day, rather than feeling like we are just wandering along aimlessly and freaking out because ohmygodheisntatadeskfor6hours.  The amount of work he is expected to do for the school is so minimal I think something must be wrong - and its wayyy below what F-Man wants to be doing - so we are slowly devising a loose curriculum to fill in the gaps. Cool science experiments that cant possibly go wrong dadeda  and learning the structure and process of story writing. Creative stuff here and there, and the best thing of all:  Lego Quest.  52 challenges, one each week. I posted a link to it on a homeschoolers Facebook page and we have now taken up the idea as a group project for a year of fun-filled square-block based learning activities.  It is FULL OF WIN!

Quest 1: Bug Truck has 7 wheel drive, adding stability and traction control during racing across chenille bedspreads.

So while his behaviour continues to be mostly hyperactive and completely inattentive 90% of the time, we are at least managing to get him to engage in SOME learning.  And some days, playing Magic: The Gathering is all the learning he can manage. But we justify it by citing mental maths skills (adding and subtracting attack/defend points) strategising and social skills (not losing your shit when you are losing).

It's a start.