NeuroSpicy Home Education

Our classroom today. Welsh is the first language here, so it’s a lovely spot to get out the welsh language books and there’s someone around happy to explain any nuances we run into. Love it here! It’s a bit of a trek but we’ll worth it!

And that is the Y4 English Curriculum completed with the aid of this really cool Minecraft workbook.

I have a bit of a love/hate thing with Minecraft because J is completely obsessed with it to the neglect of other things and really aggressive towards people after playing it, which means there are strict restrictions in place on it. However, if you can relate something to Minecraft, she will do it. She HATES planning her writing, but showing off what she knows about Minecraft mobs....she is so there for that! Although... she is now very ready to put this book in her complete file and never see it again. 🤣

Can y’all keep an eye out for these activity books? They’re delis activity books and there are a few of them out, but trying to source them is proving difficult. They’re only about a pound so if you see them and want to just grab them and I’ll give you the cash back or let me know where to go that would be amazing! We only have this around the world one.

For anyone wondering just how much of MacBeth my 8 year old could understand...
She gets it. She can quote it and she knows more than my old Highschool teacher because you can tell you what the ingredients actually are.

Last year J was forced into school for 6 weeks where they couldn’t even get her to read a single book. Tonight she has finished bloody Macbeth! Yes, it’s Shakespeare manga, but Shakespeare is Shakespeare with or without pictures.

Her favourite bit is lady Macbeth’s monologue “out damn spot” how awesome is my baby! So proud of her!

For anyone following who is interested in Welsh Resources, I've just updated our HE Website with a list of our favourite resources, why and where to get them.

Cymraeg | Neurospicy Home Educ We are an English family who after moving to North Wales decided that learning Cymraeg was the right and natural thing to do. The Welsh language is an absolutely beautiful language and honestly even without learning it, I could listen to it all day! We started our learning Journey in January 2024 an...

We ordered some cyw back issues to trial the magazine as it is aimed at a much younger audience, but it is a definite hit! The language is quite challenging (to be expected) but the activities are low demand and the characters are engaging. Colour in a rainbow? Boring! Fedri di liwio’r enfys yn gywir? Well that’s a challenge.

Our beach walk turned into an art class today when kid found some lovely daffodils and made a vase out of pebbles for them.

Caramel cookie cups for tonight’s desert, as made by babba. They look so nice! 🥰 afraid we can’t share with anyone though as those finger’s definitely made their way into her mouth midway through making the dough 😅

Yesterday was Mothers Day here in the U.K. and as a single mum of a child with no income and limited awareness of time or time management I expected nothing. My child had gone online, sourced a mothers day colouring page, printed it out and coloured it in… all by herself with no prompting or help. Best mothers day present ever.

I decided to make a learning mat for J. I wanted to put English and Welsh words on the mat, an editable word list where I can put her spelling list and the Welsh words she's currently learning. I also decided to add a prayer and a promise.

Her only stipulation was that I put as many pugs as I could fit on it.

So proud of J! She has read the first 6 books and understood all 12

Dysgu Cymraeg: twirl llyfr “pos I ti”
Even in Wales, these books are hard to find and even the (shame on you) in Llandudno don’t bother to stock kids activity books in Welsh, only baby books and books for adults to read to them and although they will order them in they have no idea what to even look for unless you have a title! But we do have some lovely independent bookshops ( .dragons )with some really nice options and who are willing to work with you to make sure they’ve got what you want.

Our new fridge calendar has been set up and put on display today. A nice, low demand way to teach days and months. It also opens up some fun conversations and gives us a nice morning starting point.

Can anyone guess what new topic we’re adding to the curriculum this year?
Mae fy merch yn dysgu cymraeg

Today we’re studying zoology in Starbucks with her fun school zoology journal and a stack of resource books.

Journal link: https://amzn.to/3Q2zGW4

J has wanted to create a YouTube channel for a while now, but she doesn't really have an idea about content. I want to talk about Home ed and Near Spicy life, but I struggle to find the motivation to actually publish anything which is why this page and insta often go long periods without being updated.

We're thinking about maybe putting together a YouTube channel combining our two goals... Would anyone be interested in it?

She agreed to do the standardised reading and spelling assessment tests today. I did them with her when she came out of school and she scored as
9 years old in spelling
12.4 years old in reading

Less than 10 months later she is now at
10 years 11 months in spelling
13.6 years old in reading

Bearing in mind how slow this last years progress has been as after leaving school she became so phobic of anything even resembling work and it took me a good two months to get her to write again! So proud!

We normally don’t start the new school year until the schools go back and we begin with a not back to school picnic. Well this year I have minecraft curriculum and do we really have to wait until next week to start? It’s September. I’m 8 can I please do my workbooks now?

So yeah… we start our new year today apparently

It’s September and I’m very excited about my new planner. This one is a mix of my personal planner and my educational planner so less for me to carry. It’s B5 size and thick so I have room for everything and even have a few blank pages left!

Today baba and Teddy attempted their second dog show. There were tears and over stimulation, but they walked away with another two ribbons.

Brushing hair is painful. Wearing shoes is painful. Being still is painful. Being slow is painful. Social cues are hard. Conforming is hard. But the conditions that make my daughters life hard also make her the child that dances barefoot in fairy wings and rainbow hair in the middle of a shopping g centre without a care. Joy lives in her heart and her soul flies free. That is more important to me than her fitting in.

Lots of people make a point about how they treat all children equally, but I'd like to take a moment and ask you if you are actually treating them equally or or if you are just treating them the same? Not all children are created equal they're all different from each other in their own ways, so are you giving each child what they need to thrive or are you giving them all the same, helping those who don't need it more than than they require and giving those who need the most help in life the same levels of help that fails to actually help them and then getting frustrated because they want different/extra?

In short, are you treating people with equality or equity? Is your treatment equal or is the support equal? Those with additional needs don't want to be treated equally, they want equal opportunities. They want support that actually meets their needs rather than just enough to show them that you can, but not enough to actually help and I'm so not here for it.

Today we’re looking at heat transference and the scientific method… in the form of instant icecream. Using frozen fruit, honey and some plain yogurt we created instant icecream where normally you make ice cream and then freeze it, this is because fruit freezes the rest of the mixture meaning by the time it emerges from the blender it is ready to eat.

The sun is out, it’s a gorgeous day and we learned about a local Roman bath house hidden away in a residential cup de sac in the middle of nowhere… so let’s do todays Roman history lesson on site!

I’ve gone through my home Ed cubby today and removed a lot of stuff that we no longer need and re-organised the stuff we’ll be using going forwards. It feels good to go through it and re-organise. We have two cubbies of games, math, English science, nature, history/geography, art, misc and blank notebooks/paper cubbies

School: your child does not have great fine motor skills…
Home Ed: really because she’s been sewing since she was one… I think you mean she has messy handwriting.

My kids latest project:

We started our week with a trip to the zoo. While we were chatting to the zookeepers we saw no less than three different school groups arrive and leave having learned absolutely nothing while she learned about the nuances of bat eyesight and routes into her dream career!

Bright Beltane Blessings from our morning nature walk where we learned how to make flower crowns.

Babba loves the idea of riding a bike, but sadly she just doesn’t have the stability to be able to do so. Shes also so big now that she requires teen sized bikes… I found an adult trike for her. It is too big. I mean it’s as tall as she is, the wheels are 24”! However, once she climbs onto it, she is perfectly able to ride it and since it’s a trike she doesn’t actually need to touch the floor while seated. She rode it the full 7miles home! And little Teddy hitched a ride in the back.