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The Plan
It's September 2019 and that means we're now at the start of the second year of our 5 year plan. It's a bit like saving your first £100 as a kid, you never think you're going to get there but when you do, it feels great. It feels like such an accomplishment.
The Hubs has now started the second year of City and Guilds bricklaying at college (he's re-training from FLT driver to bricklayer) and this is the year that he'll hopefully get a mature student apprenticeship (fantastically, at no cost to us) but it will take 2 further years to complete. However, if there are no apprenticeships available he can just finish this year at college, find a job on-site and pay for a private NVQ assessor to get his final blue tradesman card. The good thing about that is that it will only take one year to complete privately rather than two. Meaning it will move us along the plan one whole year quicker. Happy days!
During the first year of the plan, I have been busy in the preparation stage. I have written and had published 7 articles, 6 of which have also been used in multiple sister magazines of the original one I wrote for and gained a letter of recommendation for my writing. I passed my Level 2 CACHE Mental Health Awareness Course which took so much longer than I anticipated because of the dexterity problems I had with my hands. But it's done and now I just have to wait patiently for my certificates. I started writing a book and began designing my website for online coaching.
As for the start of year 2 of the plan for me, I'm currently in talks with a guy who is setting up a new digital radio website and needs a playlist producer (hopefully that person will be me) and I'm in the planning stage of creating a new course on Thinkific. I'll be continuing with writing and gaining leads for freelance, and if the Hubs gets his apprenticeship I will be marketing and selling CBD products online too.
As you know we've changed the way we home ed which has driven *I to want to do more academics and learn the highway code. She chose a workbook from the shops and is enjoying learning at her own pace as and when it suits her. She's had a few driving lessons on private land. Driving a manual isn't easy when you're 11 and can just about see over the steering wheel, but she's doing really well and making a real effort with the theory too. *O wants to do more drawing and learn some parkour moves. He's using YouTube tutorials and a drawing app. His new thing is to draw people a picture when it's their birthday. He makes it personal to the person and thinks about what they would like. The Hubs enjoys Marvel films and *O drew him as a superhero for his birthday. It was really good and Hubs loved it. *N has decided that she no longer wants to do the senior section with Girlguiding. She's just not getting any joy from it but has decided that she wants to go into leisure and tourism next September. We went on a coach trip a few weeks ago to Scarborough and I think that's what's inspired her. Once she realised that the travel agent who arranges the trips gets to go along for free it quickly became quite appealing to her.
I'm pleased that autonomous learning has had a positive effect on them. I was worried that it wouldn't work but after one 'full-term' of free-learning things are changing for the better.
I'm really happy that it's September now, it means all the mainstreamers are going back to school and we can start having days out again without it being packed and costing a fortune. There's a new trampoline place about 40 minutes away which has discounts for home edders, so we'll be checking that out very soon. We can finally take our trip to Whitby and go to the cinema on the cheap days with the Meerkat App without tons of families bombarding the place. Hurrah!
