This weeks blog is a real celebration of owning your own quirks! 😋
Yesterday was a real highlight of my entire week. I had spent most of the week looking after my ill children 🤢 and creating both content and craft to use for fundraising. It was yesterday that all of the hard work paid off for us as a team.
It was a 13 hour work day (mostly standing) and let me tell you that I am paying for it today. 🧟♀️ However, it was so worth it.
My day began at the lovely William Gilpin school, where I volunteer support to a few children with SEN. We were having a WWII experience day and I decided to throw myself into the spirit. I knew that some of the kids may not have been super comfortable dressing up, so seeing an adult looking a bit silly has to help ease their tension… it certainly worked! 🤣🤣🤣
We all realised early on in class (pretending it was 1939) that there was no room in those days for individuality. Everyone wore something similar to the next person. The girls had to be in skirts, the boys in shorts or trousers. Women were most likely going to be homemakers and the men went to war. Children’s learning was regimented and never individualised, regardless of need and my little students picked up on it. 😍 It lead to some really lovely discussions about how grateful we are to live in our time, even though its still far from perfect. How I can come to work with brightly coloured hair and NEVER wear a skirt 🤣 and how my way of learning is not the same as my mates, but it’s still learning. Great, great day.
Next I moved onto another school, this time in Christchurch. The Priory School’s annual Christmas Fair.
It was our second Awesome Archie pop up shop of the season and it was lovely. We not only managed to raise £ 270 🎉🎉🎉 but we were more importantly able to talk about the power and beauty of autism . How it’s not to be feared and how peoples quirkiness is part of their individual make up and should be celebrated.
It was very moving for my husband and I to see so many kids wearing our Awesome Archie merch and each T came with a lecture of “BE PROUD TO BE YOU!” 😍
We are delighted to announce that HALF of yesterday profits will be fed back into the Priory school via their own charity “Friends of Priory School.” We hope that the £135 we are donating will help you to keep spreading the message of love and acceptance and keep all of your lovely pupils happy 🙂 Not only that, we have just purchased you a “life skills” play set (toaster, blender, kettle, etc.,) for you to keep your “awesome” kids learning those all important life skills.
Another AWESOME week 🙂