Home-Ed children raise awareness about plastic pollution

Jennifer Dorrington has been home educating her daughter for 4 years. Recently, Jennifer set up a group for home educated children to help them with their learning.

Due to her daughter's autism, she has had to trial and error different resources and style of learning. Her daughter struggled with the science groups and would find it quiet intimidating and would get frustrated and upset as she wouldn't understand what the group were trying to learn in one session. 

Jennifer decided to take a step back from what wasn't working and go on the hunt for something new that she could start. Then she came across the Pawprint family and thought that their challenges were brilliant. The Pawprint family challenges have a variety of themes. Jennifer thought these themes would make the classes more interesting for her daughter as she loves variety. Another thing Jennifer liked about Pawprint family is that they offer badges as a record of accomplishment, which she knew would drive her daughter to achieve a reward.

Jennifer started the groups in September and runs them twice a week one at the park and one at the library.

Jennifer started with the Aquarium Badge, she felt like the challenges would be fun and great for the local community to come together. The first badge was a huge hit and saw new and old friends come together to work on it. Most importantly, Jennifer's daughter has loved the badges, she no longer gets upset and feels overwhelmed as the challenges are SEND friendly.

In the group, the children have made edible aquariums, recycled jellyfish and even taken an aquarium quiz.  

The Pawprint family challenges work on an age guide for completed challenges that earn the badge.

On the 17th of October the children all got together at Stalybridge Library to make a statement piece for their project. The project is to raise awareness about the amount of plastic pollution in the oceans, something the children are very passionate about.

The display is available for all to see at Portland Basin Museum until Friday 24^th October.