First Week of October

Well we got to meet our new LSS last week and it went pretty good I think.  I think she will be a great fit and we can hopefully get all the special needs stuff set up quickly again for Nathan.

Nathan has not said he has had any migraines but he has reported felling like he has the flu... He wasn't able to do any schooling for about 3 days over the last few weeks.  I don't think he ever developed into his typical full on migraine.  I didn't even mention to him that it was migraine, let him think he had the flu, which looked like a migraine.  He still did a few things on his flu day on Thursday like try and study for a science test, read his novel etc, without me asking him to do anything.  I think he is doing really well at getting stuff done.  I have to be pretty proud of him.

Language Arts -  

yeah both Nathan's and Genevieve's language arts arrived!  I am only slightly terrified of the programs I have chosen for them!

Nathan - he was really wanting to start language arts, like he was upset he could not start in September, I thought it was great to get a head start on everything else we were doing.  But when I showed him what we were doing he was a bit confused because it is definitely not open an go.  It is a lot of socratic learning and I will be having to do these programs with both of them.

Nathan's

Genevieve's

there are 6 components

grammar - we start this right away

vocabulary - we start this right away as well, some of the vocab words are used in the grammar books

grammar practice - this is 100 practice sentences to use the 5 part analysis on, we dont start this until we are almost done grammar

Poetry - I haven't looked at this much, but I believe we can start about 1/2 way through grammar

writing - Nathan will be doing academic writing we will start when we are finished grammar

novels - I have chosen 6 novels that Michael clay Thompson has annotated to read, we will mostly be discussing these orally, but when we move on in the writhing we may use some of the novels to a literary analysis


So we have started grammar the first few pages of reading.  We also started vocabulary, I thought Nathan was going to put up a fuss, but I think he actually kind of enjoyed it.  The vocabulary deals with a lot of root words, for me knowing root words was like opening a huge door for me, so I think it will be for Nathan as well, all of a sudden he will realize he can figure out the meaning of all words.  he is always asking the meaning of words so I think this will help him.  For our first novel we are reading The Call of The Wild.  So far I am not that interested in the book, Nathan I don't think is either, but he is picking up the book and reading it even without me asking him to.  What I like about the book is it has vocab words with definitions at the bottom of pages.  There is also literary analysis on most pages.  I dont know how much of a fan of the literary analysis I am, but I think that is because I just don't see what the author sees.

Genevieve - she is reading Calpurina Tate as part of her social studies, science, and language arts cross curricular study.  I love the book, Genevieve is not really a fan.  I dont think she can feel connected to the main character.  I think she wonders why anyone would want to be a naturalist, I think she must think that is pretty boring the character also does not enjoy her piano lessons, that must be sacrilege to Genevieve.  I am hoping she will fall in love with the book soon.

Math - 

because of Nathan's "flu" he has not done as much as normal, I think he missed 4 days of math in the last two weeks.  He has moved on from factoring equations.

question 8 below

question 7 below

review of factoring

Genevieve - we decided that instead of finishing Math 7 she could just write the exams and if she passed the exams she could move on, I think her lowest score was 90% most were 100%. So we moved her up to grade 8 math.  I have let her continue to write the exams first.  So far the first two exams she has scored 100%. The first few chapters is review from grade 7.  I will keep letting her write the exams only though until she comes up with things that she does not understand or has less then 90%.  I think doing it this way has actually helped her confidence and ability in math, she said mom, I had questions that I was never taught to do, but I was able to just figure it out.

Music

Genevieve is loving going to band every other morning!  She has already caught up to her flute partner who has had band for the last two years.  Her band teacher said I forgot why I had requested Genevieve to be in grade 8 band, but I had to just trust that I knew what I was talking about when I had requested it, and he said that she has caught up in 7 band classes.  I am grateful that she was given this opportunity and that he recognized her love of music.

voice and piano -

Genevieve is putting a lot of effort into both of these she watched The Sound of Music this week as she will be singing one of the songs this year.  Piano she is practicing every day as well.  And of course her composing while I dont think she composed any new music this week, she has almost completed her score for one of her songs.

Nathan - he continues to use the piano as he goes by the piano, or Jeff has noticed he plays the piano more when he is feeling good.


Genevieve and I went to go see the Live streaming of the Met Opera Aida.  Her voice teacher Marlene went with us.  I was surprised it was a full house.  Of course Genevieve and I were the only non- seniors there again.  She loved it, I did not like the 4 hours sitting in a cinema chair, but I brought a cushion and a blanket, and took some toroidal before we went!  One of our favourite things about seeing it live in HD is, they do interviews with the actors backstage, and Aida, said that one of the hardest parts is how many of this one particular word she has to say and how hard it is.  Well just this week, Genevieve was working on this word in her song!  She is practicing her first Italian song and she was having trouble with the same word :). It definitely got a laugh out of Genevieve and her voice teacher.  They also went to the basement where they store costumes from previous Aida's and talked about who has played the title roles before.  They have 2 more in October not sure if we can make the other two, I wish it was a little cheaper to go, my ticket is $28 and Gigi gets a $1 discount.

https://www.metopera.org/season/2018-19-season/aida/

Science

Genevieve is studying evolution with reals science odyssey.   She also did a lab with the microscope, she looked at three different types of wings and drew them out.  

willing away migraines

Health

Well Nathan seems to be good at willing away his migraines.  Before the start of the year, we were going over planning and the need to stay ahead, plan for migraines.  I told him your starting hockey, your going to get migraines.  He told me he is going to will away his migraines, explained about pain pathways and explained that pain is just in your head and your head malfunctioning.  He said he can learn and train his brain to ignore these pain pathways.  I told him that was meditation and neurofeedback.  His paediatrician and I have been trying to get him in on doing this for a while now, even though the paediatrician supplied him with studies on neurofeedback and how it can change your epigenetics, he was still thinking it was pseudoscience.  

Well into our third week and Nathan hasn't had 1 migraine!!!  How is this possible?  There was one school day where he wasn't quite feeling well, he submitted a science assignment and received 70%, you could definitely see that was not up to his usual standard, he has received 100% on everything else he has submitted so far.  You can really see he feels great.  He has had some really great hockey days.  He even got a cold, and was down for 1-2 days, but was able to recover and get going on his studies.  Maybe this is the year we have all been waiting for.  I am not sure, but I can say that these 3 weeks have been the easiest 3 weeks of his life!  You can see how much stronger his body is getting and how much easier it is for him.  Now I do know that he will probably end up getting some migraines this year, but I do really hope that it lessons for him.  I know it has been one of Jeff and our's greatest worry in what he will be able to do for work because of the impact of his migraines.  We both say to others when we are asked, he will be fine, there are lots of jobs that have flexibility, but I know both of us worry about it.  Jeff had a co-worker say to him well what are you going to do, you dont want your son to be like so and so(another employee), who is always chronically ill.  Jeff was a little annoyed and was like well there isn't much we can do it is a genetic condition that has no cure, of course I would love for him not to be chronically sick.  Some people just have no clue!

School work

Math

Nathan - we didn't do any math over the summer or very little so he is still working on algebra.  He will be finished this book in about 9-10 weeks.  So 2-3 months behind the schedule I had originally had for him.   We are totally okay with this as he is still working far ahead.  His plan is still to write a Math 10 challenge exam in the spring time.  I think he can easily be ready, and he will gain practice studying and writing tests this year.

Nathan was finding his math work a little annoying working with quadratic equations.  He could not see how he would ever use this in real life.  Thankfully today there was a real life question using a quadratic equation!  I love life of Fred for this.  The question was about chairs being set up in rows and columns.  Totally not really something that you would typically use quadratic equation for typically, but it was easy to understand and to see how you could use a quadratic equation.  he could then see that it can be used for physics.  I think he was happier after, it think he thought it was just a way to get you to use factoring!

what Nathan is working on Quadradic equations,

this was his work today solving easy quadratic equations.

Genevieve - we didn't do any math this summer either, so she is still about 6 weeks from finishing her grade 7 math.  She would have done math over the summer but her computer died, and of course her math is on the computer.  We have purchased her a Macbook air, which she loves.  I am thinking I will get her to answer only every other question again as she keeps on getting 100% of the answers correct.   I think giving her a break over the summer actually increased her confidence in math and she is feeling pretty good about it.  She has always felt not as confident in math, I think because she compares herself to Nathan, but she always understands concepts.  I will get her to answer every question on the tests this year though so there is more to show.  I have her keeping a better journal of her questions as well, it isn't great but I will work on it with her this year.  I would like her getting used to writing out her answers so someone else can understand them lol

PE

I signed Nathan up for PE 10 at estreams.  I figured this way he can just get it checked off this year, even though it is very little work, it is just one less thing for him to worry about next year.  I decided to cross enroll him to get around the funding issue, as I know there is some kind of funding thing in that the school of record can not receive funding for grade 9 and grade 10, because they are two different funding systems.   And Nathan is already doing some grade 10 classes.  I figured this would be the easiest way to go about this as getting French and science organized was a bit of a pain.

Language Arts

For both of them their LA curriculum is not in yet, but they both have been doing some writing.  Nathan in his science has had to do a fair amount of writing.  For this writing assignment he had to read a current science news article and write a summary and his own opinions on the subject.  I thought he did a pretty good job of summarizing and then writing his own thoughts.  

Genevieve has been writing a novel from the 1st person viewpoint.  Her novel is geared towards a teenage audience, and I think it is well thought out.   I really hope that she gives permission to share her work this time.  So many times she doesn't keep her writing and does not share it.  She is working on the 5th chapter now.  She is mostly working on this late at night.  She is finding it hard to go to sleep lately and has been working on this novel.  I know her brain just doesn't want to shut down.  I think we will have to work on some sleep hygiene for her this year though as I know it is not great for her to be up so late and have a hard time shutting off.  Thankfully Nathan does not have this problem and when he is tired (9:30) he goes to bed.

Science 

Nathan- Nathan is completing science 10 this year.  So far I think he is really enjoying it.  I ended up printing out the semester timeline for him and he is completing it with ease.  He says wow Science 10 doesn't have much to it, only 15 weeks worth of work lol.  He doesn't know there was a full year option.  I wanted to get him used to the faster pace of a semester system.  I also thought since not everything is in full swing yet, we still need to add LA to our day that he can be doing extra.  So far he has not had any difficulties keeping this pace.  He is going to write his first proctored exam (besides me doing the proctoring) on Friday.  We have been talking about how to study and the need to study.  He really hasn't studied before, except if you count the 2 hours he did before his science 9 final.  The only thing that worries me is that he doesn't tend to memorize the little details, with studying I know these details would come to him, but he thinks he only has to read something or watch something once to know the material.  I have been slowly trying to teach him the art of retention and re-reading for information.  It is definitely a skill he needs to learn.  So far he has done quite well with 100% on all assignments except 1.  

Genevieve -   I am excited I bought Real Science odyssey Biology level 2.  This program is stupid crazy expensive $180 US dollars!!!!  But I found it used for $50 Canadian so I bought it!  The student book would have cost me that much anyway and it would have come out of funding so this way I can just resell it afterwards and hopefully get 3/4 of my money back!  But what I am really excited about is the quality of this curriculum, I wish I would have bought it for Nathan when he was younger.  I am excited to start this with Genevieve though, I think we can have a fun time going through this together and hopefully she can build up more of a love for science as well.  At the moment I think her dislike for math/science is because Nathan loves math/science!  I am thinking we will start on this next week.  

Social studies

I have not started this yet either and will need to start soonish, I ordered in Genevieve something, Nathan I am not even sure what we are doing, have I planned anything lol.  We must have planned something?  I better go check my learning plan and get on it!!!

Genevieve- she has been doing some of her history of music.  I need to write up a schedule for her and I so that we can see what she should be doing each day.  she doesn't need to do this curriculum each day, so I am thinking of alternating with science, maybe 3 days science 2 days history of music. I have to check our times and see when and where we will do all of the stuff we have organized!  It is always a challenge fitting everything in.

Schedule

Nathan is doing quite well sticking to a schedule, and getting things done.  He does not have his full schedule going yet but hopefully in the next few weeks more things will fall into place.  Nathan will have art class and cooking soon so that will take up a big chunk of time, 4 hours a week with that!  We also have to add in his social studies and Language Arts.

Just worked on a schedule for Genevieve, she had done one up herself earlier, I just added the subjects that she should complete each day.  She is busy, but she has nothing scheduled on the weekends.  This year she has Wednesday and Friday nights open as well.  If she does get into band she that will be only 1 or 2 days a week, so she will have to miss some school time with that.  It seems like so much time but it really is hard to get all of her school work done.  

New School Year 2018-19

Summer 2018

As we were heading into summer I realised that this may be our last summer without having Nathan working.  We had plans of doing more schoolwork this summer, but I soon dumped most of the school work in favour of having a last hurrah of fun.  I made lists of things that I wanted to do with the kids this summer.  We managed to hit some of them.  I think we had a great summer of fun.

Canada Day 

We went to the Aldergrove Parade, where Genevieve's cheer team performed.

Nathan's kava plank creation

Ginger the Infinity Cheer Elite Mascot

Genevieve basing on the right

Genevieve helped design Ginger's cheer uniform to match her own uniform

Exchange Students

We started by having 2 Japanese students stay with us only for 4 days.  We took them on a slow food bike tour of Agassiz.  We got to eat lots of food while biking around, thankfully Agassiz is pretty flat.  I think it was a bit much for our exchange students, but they still enjoyed it.   We then headed to Hope for dinner and a visit to Othello tunnels.  The next day Genevieve was doing a cheer demo at Aldergrove fair.  She loved spending time at the fair.  We then took off to go to White Rock for a few hours, we learnt that white rock is not dog friendly at all!

Genevieve basing on right

Jade and Genevieve and a dog from a movie!

Nathan

Nathan enjoyed some down hill mountain biking and we set him up with some proper gear to hopefully protect him as he barrels down mountains, in an adrenalin rush.  Lots of street hockey happening this summer.  Nathan has discovered video editing and has been having fun creating movies of his summer.  He has spent hours learning how to do this.  I am glad that we have MacBooks as it is just so much easier to do this.

Nathan also started writing quotes, here are a few of them that I enjoyed.

Genevieve

Genevieve has continued cheer about 3 days a week but decreased her hours, in the gym.  She had the last 2-3 weeks of summer completely off cheer, I think this little break has been great for her body.  This summer she has had the opportunity to fly on her level 1 cheer team and she has enjoyed learning these new skills.  Genevieve landed her back tuck by herself!  Yeah such hard work she has done this year to get here!  She has also continued to be very artistic.  She wrote and composed her own song in a few days this summer and it was a totally different method.  Typically she writes lyrics first and then she is able to play the piano to match.  This time she wrote the piano music first, she then said I like the piano part, but I dont think I can sing to this.  Over the next few days, she had lyrics written for then song.  I will try and get her to record this song soon, so I can post it.  I think it is her best song yet!  

Happy Birthday GIGI

Genevieve turned 12!  We celebrated by going to Giggle Ridge for the day with our good friends and had grandma and grandpa and dad join us for a BBQ in the evening.

August Long Weekend

We had another Japanese student arrive for the August long weekend.  We have gone to the lantern festival at Manning Park for the last 4 summers.  The kids were not as excited about the lanterns this year, so we may not go next year.  The end of an era, fun while it lasted.  Maybe we will be back one day and they will want to build some crazy lanterns

family picture

the lanterns

a small hike in the sub-alpine meadows

lightning lake, it was the first year, I let the kids jump off of rainbow bridge. 

Weaver Lake

We went up to Weaver lake with Tyler and Cody, and Simonne and had a blast!  We brought our kayaks and BBQ, the day started out with rain and all of us telling Nathan it was not a good idea to start the day off with the rope swing, as he didn't have a change of clothing.  Ended with Nathan swimming 1/2 way across a lake fully clothed, and us gathering a flotilla of kayaks together to pull him back on to his kayak, and apparently everyone learnt a new word... flotilla.

boys will be umm crazy!

thank-fully we convinced Nathan to wait until on the way back

the pack

PNE

We have always lived here and yet we have never taken the kids to the PNE before!  Well I was brave this year and decided to take the kids.  Of course to the kids the PNE is play land... I was thoroughly bored, kids had a good time, I left them while I went and wandered around.  I thought kids would want to stay right to the bitter end, but the gravatron ride ended their fun and they both wanted to leave after that ride!  I took a bunch of video's of them riding the rides, I have to get Nathan to make a video from our time there.

the hellavator

Nathan's just a little bit taller then me now!

There were so many other trips and events that happened over the summer, I think we had some pretty good adventures even if we just stayed close to home most of the time.  I wonder what next year will bring!

February 2018

sorry not to much to update.

sickness, I have a kidney infection - good thing is that kids are pretty independent

nathan- has been battling pretty bad migraines for a few weeks now

Genevieve woke up today with a cold

Besides all that everything is going well. 

Nathan school work some samples of nathan for you

Mr worm, Nathan had to identify the sex, he could only find small worms, so he had to use the microscope to look at them.  Then one worm crawled into the microscope, thankfully we were able to get him out.

Ginger is tired from a day of school work

Genevieve has completed her own composition, she struggled with it in the last few months and was having a hard time with the song.  I thought maybe she was nervous about competing this year, as there is about 4 times the entrants, and she has heard 3 others and they were amazing.  But as it turns out, the song she wrote always made her feel sad when she sang it, so she scrapped the ending last minute, changed it and she loves it again.  She ended the song feeling more positive and that is what she wanted I guess.  She finished the song the day before the score was due, I will include a copy for you.

Genevieve the last few weeks I could see was feeling an immense amount of pressure from all directions.  Cheer, the team is relying on her getting her skills and performing them, she has cheerfest this weekend which is the venue that her old cheer team puts on.  She will be seeing all of her friends and her old coach this weekend.  Voice and Piano, her teacher talked with her and wanted her to be practicing more and putting in more time before the festivals.  Genevieve was trying to figure out when she could posiibly get it all accomplished as she has school/cheer/choir/practices, and not enough time in the day.  It did not help that I had outlined a pretty ambitious academic schedule for her as well, so she has pressures coming at her from every direction.  I could see she was distressed trying to figure out when she could possibly add more practice time.  So we have agreed to go lighter on academics for the next 6 weeks, concentrating on math/German.  You could just see all of the pressure and stress leave her.  Fo the past week she has been practicing piano and voice for at least 1 1/2 hours a day, and this is what is required of her, she is sounding so much more at ease with her pieces and I think part of it is she is more relaxed.  We are going to have to keep on working at this with her trying to find her optimal times to get everything accomplished.

some pictures of cheer

practicing back tuck off of the tumble track, perfect form

always a smile, two long days in Seattle 

Her new uniform, she is getting used to showing a midriff, and how "small" the uniforms are, she things maybe part of her skirt is missing

School, Genevieve is plugging away at everything, I think she will take a break from doing the Afghanistan unit until after lions festival.

Genevieve has been baking and cooking a lot the last little while. here are a few of her things

Genevieve is fulfilling cinnamon bun orders from her cheer friends

so yummy

Making blueberry filling for doughnuts

frying her doughnuts, they were soooo yummy

Nathan, he keeps on having some rough games at hockey, and that is pretty hard on his body.  He has been having more frequent migraines it seems.  He has been exhausted and finding it difficult to concentrate on school.  He has been trying hard to get as much as he can done, but I think he has not been able to do as much science in the last few weeks. Hopefully he can complete the unit he is on by next week.

Game MVP for Nathan in Osoyoos!

Coaches said he does everything they ask of him, he listens so well to instructions, and reads the play

Nathan has been working on building a structure track for his RC car.  He woke up not feeling well with a migraine one day but decided he needed to be doing something so he was determined to build something.  he was really determined, so we let him have at er

Here is a copy of Genevieve's song she submitted to the adjudicator.