ancient egyptian calligraphy anyone?

So this morning we finished up lesson 6 of MBTP language arts

- worksheet on similie, and metaphor

- circle map of friends and a short paragraph to accompany it.

Nathan finished all of his work printing with a pencil, because dragon is not working, and he did not complain at all.  When he called me over and said he was done, and I read his paragraph, he ran away when I said we should add more detail of what he had done.  I recognized that he was probably crushed because he was thinking this meant that his paragraph was not very good, and man that was a lot of effort on his part to write this paragraph with his hands, poor guy...  So I went and talked to him and explained that I understood, and I thought what he had written was great.  He felt better and then we played a professor noggins ancient civilizations game.  Genevieve was working on her work still but she could hear us asking the trivia questions, and she kept on answering.  Nathan kept on saying how do you possibly know that lol.  She would say I read it in this book or that book, love that Genevieve loves to read and gets passionate about subjects and reads every book we have on it. But we did have to tell Genevieve to but out and she could play a game when she was finished.

Genevieves work will require an interpreter to read as she completed her schoolwork today writing in ancient egyptian, and that is why she was not the first one done today.  She even wrote her paragraph in ancient egyptian lol.  Oh how I love her passions.

gigis calligraphy, she added a paragraph as well after I took the photo

very happy doing her work

When gigi was finished both Nathan and Genevieve played proffesor noggin, while I made lunch.  I had planned on teaching canadian history during this time, but they are both on an ancient egyptian kick that I think maybe it is a good thing to let them go off on their own to enjoy this passion of Egypt that they both have.

Piano and voice was up next.

gigi was up first so Nathan and I worked on math, he grumbled when I brought out math, I complained about his grumbling, we argued a bit, I said I was tired of him not putting in the effort.  He said well you have to stop giving me such baby work.  The science we are doing is boring, I already know everything.  So we got into a conversation about what exactly he wanted.  I showed him some thinkwell videos with advanced math, and physics, he said ok I dont know that, thats what I want you to teach me.  I liked the equation, now show me what it all means.   This is the video we watched.

 So I told him I would show him and that if he can commit to proving to me he can do algebra I will teach it to him.  So we decided to do a little bit of algebra right then.

For Genevieves turn with me, we ran over to the dance wear store to buy dance slippers for her, but they were sold out of her size, we then went to our old favourite tea shop and sat and had tea, while we did our math lesson, loved our time, before we took gigi to cheer for 5-7:30.

Nathan and I went out for dinner at moxies and we worked some more on math, he is super duper excited, and wanted to go to the library and see if they had any algebra books to try out.  We did not have time but I promised to go look tomorrow.  When we got home, he thought it would be a good idea to go through my old textbooks to see if I had any old algebra books in there.  All we could find was calculus.  We did bring up some chemistry 12 text books I found though.

When Genevieve found out I was going to the library tomorrow she asked for more books on Egypt.  When we got home they asked me to gather up all of our Egyptian books so that they could read them tonight before bed.  They both picked some books, but both of them did not read much before falling asleep.  Love that we have a pretty good size library at home for resource books, I had about 15 different books on Egypt!

Weeks 2-3 Barkerville and a whole lot

Well we ended our second week on a trip to barkerville.  Our trip started off on a bumpy road, we had wanted to leave at 6 am, but the night before noticed our tire was low, and everywhere was closed.  So 7 am Jeff drove to kal tire to get it replaced.  The nail in the tire was at an odd angle and it took almost 2 hours to repair.  So we were off like our typical heard of turtles at just after 9 am.  After a few struggles with car sickness and dropping off ginger we arrived at wells around 6 pm.  We found a super cute motel after I curled my nose up at the other possibilities, Jeff made fun of the fact I wanted luxury.  We had one of the best dinners I have ever had at the bears paw just across the road.

Next morning we woke up early and headed to barkerville for opening time.  Poor nathan wasn't doing so well in the morning he had one of his mood swings and hated being there, it was stupid etc.  Jeff and I were rolling our eyes I believe as we knew nathan would love the place.    But his poor eyes were twitching and he was miserable.  We sat down to eat, and the rest of us tried to enjoy our meal.   Thankfully by the end of the meal nathan had suddenly returned to normal, if not on a slight high.  We left the restaurant and he ran all over trying to see everything.  We railed him in and headed to our first experience which was a tour of barkerville.  We all loved this one and the general information we recieved.  

So day one we explored a lot on our own and did the following shows.  

- introduction tour 1 hour long

- billy barker tour 40 minutes a new feature now that they have discovered where his claim was. 

- musical at the theatre.  We really enjoyed this musical- even more so that it was heated inside and we were freezing, we didn't bring toques with is and nathan and Jeff were wearing shorts.  I think it felt like it was going to snow. 

- waterwheel - this one was great and we were able to discus the mechanics of it after and discuss the energy involved.  The guides were great with this one, although we did catch some wrong information when she said there was no mechanical energy involved, what she meant was there wasn't any electrical energy, thankfully we had just learned about this.  

The day was rainy but we still enjoyed our time.  We explored a lot on our own and headed to the hotel at about 5 pm

Just when we were trying to settle down for bed, Nathan got restless, and then ended up with headache and lots of weird aura.  This aura lasted until he fell asleep about 12:30, he was having such a hard time falling asleep because of the aura, even when he closed his eyes he was seeing things.  He was having alice and wonderland affect as well, he saw icicles hanging from the ceiling.  Lots of lots of interesting things he was seeing, but hard to sleep during.

Day 2 

There were a bunch of the activities and shows that we still had left to see and we wanted to compete in the amazing race challenge they were having in the afternoon, so we arranged our time very carefully. 

- school room experience- wow kids think I'm awesome now, and they thoroughly enjoyed seeing daddy get in trouble, Jeff definately felt like he was back in school

- courtroom experience in Richfield.  This was a 1/2 hour walk away, it was a murder trial, definately gave us an understanding of life in those times.  The walk back gave us a lot of time to discuss the case and circumstances around it. 

Chinese school - this was a totally different experience, they focused less on the discipline and more on what you would learn in a Chinese school.  We worked with an abicus, and leaned Chinese calligraphy.  Gigi loved the calligraphy.   

Right after this was the amazing race.  This was the best part of the day I think.  We worked as a team and were given challenges.  Some only one member could complete, some all of us.  We had to do things like find a spittoon brush in a store, I had to grind a 1lb of coffee the old fashioned way.  Lots of trivia questions and the best challenge of all was the one we picked Jeff to do!  It was a chilli eating challenge.  He could pick fire or ice chilli.  Of course he picked ice thinking it would be less hot chili.  What he got was really smoking hot chilli frozen in ice cubes and one of those ginormous bread bowls.  It was the funniest thing ever tring to get Jeff to eat the entire bowl.  Jeff was already tring to finish and someone else came in to attempt the challenge.  She was an amazingly fast eater and we thought she would win, but her stomach could not handle the heat!   Poor Jeff we were laughing so hard and he managed to shove the last bits in his mouth, run out and spit it out ha ha it was a 45 point challenge!  

We ended up coming in third place and the only one disappointed was Jeff, he thought we should have won for all the suffering he was going through, I am still laughing as I wrote this!  I wish I had pictures, I was having to much fun to take pictures of him.   

Next morning we left for Prince George.  I think we had a pretty relaxing time here and we all really enjoyed the Canucks training camp.  Nathan most especially!  His favorite player skated up and have his stick to nathan.  He could not believe his luck.  

I wish we had more pictures but all I can say is we were having too much fun to take pictures!

Day 16 Ancient Egyptian Art

Well in future I have plans to be able to get some school work done in the morning before art class starts, not sure if this will be a reality or not. 

Instead of school work from 9-10 we made waffles, Nathan made blueberry sauce.  And then we did the 10 minute tidy before our art teacher Jessica arrived at 10 am.

Jessica taught art from 10-12.  I was in the other room, doing some lesson planning and scheduling, but I could over hear some and it was wonderful.  She had brought some books on ancient egypt and she read to them a little as they were working on their art.  It was wonderful as it definately made their art more meaningful. 

They did an art project that was drawing a picture of themselves, interpreted as an ancient egyptian.  Once they completed their drawings how they liked they then used carbon paper to transfer the drawing to watercolour paper.  They then used watercolours to colour their drawings.  We decided that these would be great to put in our timeline books for the history of the world.  They also learned the ancient egyptian alphabet, and Genevieve loved this.


After Art we spent some time starting our next lesson on moving beyond the page, Nathan and genevieve read most of  the reading and then completed one worksheet. 

We went to horse lessons after, Nathan has not been having a good time at horse lately because his hips have been really bothering him when he rides.  He was really sore when he woke up the next morning, and asked me to bring ginger down off his bed because his hip hurt too much to carry ginger down the stairs.  At this point I am unsure what to do about horse, I think it might be something that we have to give up, we will talk to  janet again and see if she has any other suggestions.

After horse riding we went over to mark strahl's office and we put stamps on envelops while watching part of the monk debate.  We have been helping Mark with his election campaign a few times, we assembled lawn signs a few weeks ago.  We also went to a concervative campaign rally in abbotsford, where nathan got to shake hands with the prime minister of canada.  This campaign has been a wonderful way to get the kids involved in politics because they feel like they have a little vested interest in the campaign.  They would like Mark to keep his job, so we can still go on holidays with them in the summer, and one of their favorite dads can tow them around on a tube.  They have enjoyed their volunteer experience so far.  

Before bed, I read the last 5 pages of the kids assigned reading for the day to them.

Genevieve instead of bedtime reading she decorated her art folder with ancient egyptian writing, she worked hard  on it and quickly memorized all of the symbols for the alphabet, she then came into the room, and wanted me to quiz her.

Weeks 3-4

What have we been up to?

Well week 3 I was not feeling great after 

our trip burned out and still fighting the never ending cold.  It is almost 4 weeks and I am still coughing in the morning and night!  So not a whole lot was accomplished last week. 

Tuesday 

- we dropped daddy off at the airport.  

- piano/ singing

- cheer 5-7:30

Wednesday. 

- I drove my inlaws to a dr appt so no school work but kids still did their thing

- physio/ music with Kim

- hockey

- Gigi CSOPA 

Thursday exploratorium!

- so we showed up and I find out nathan is the only boy and the class seems fairly young.  I left thinking nathan is going to hate hate hate this!  I picked them up and nathan seemed cheerful all was good etc .  I asked how it was nathan said it was fantastic. Genevieve said didn't you think the teacher talked to fast, were you able to get it all down.  He said he didn't mind the writing they had lots of breaks so he wasn't writing the whole time.  I was completely shocked by his interest in the class, he said we are not really doing science we are doing Eco systems, which is about as boring as science gets for nathan.  I have no idea why nathan loved the class!!!  He says he really likes the teacher.  Genevieve liked it but was not as warm as nathan.  

We then had cheer from 5-6:30

Soccer in chilliwack 6-7:30.  

Yes I have to be two places at once, I so wish I felt comfortable leaving nathan at practice alone!   I got my inlaws to pick up Gigi and then I picked her up at 8.  We were home at 8:30 and it was wayyyyy to long of a day for nathan, he had a big headache and all he wanted to do was sleep.  Ugg I need to come up with other options.  

Friday 

Mbtp work and then tutor came in the afternoon.  

Tuesday September, 15. Day 7

Today I think we learned some skills in time management.  I had an ophthalmologist appointment this morning at 10 am.  Kind of in the middle of our day.  So we prepped in the morning going over things together so they could be independently working in the waiting room.  I knew we would need this as after years of seeing an ophthalmologist the one thing I know is they seem to always be busy and running late.  I have waited 4 hours at children's hospital before, I guess not very many physicians decide to specialize in eyes.  Kids did well reading their novel and answering their questions while waiting  for me.

We got home about 11:30, kids finished up their language arts, while I made lunch. 

1) answer questions

Genevieve's

genevieve page 2

2) come up with 3 questions to ask at an academic bowl

Genevieve

Nathan

3 ) predicate worksheet

Nathan

Genevieve

4) idioms

Nathan, he really understands idioms right away, and did not have to look up any in the book to get a reference. 

Genevieve, looked up some of these in the book to get a refference

After they were finished, nathan helped empty the dishwasher and make lunch.  Genevieve continued on her Japan lap book, I think she is almost finished, she wants to complete a cover for her book like Nathan's.  

this thing is huge

We then went to piano, I had assignments laid out for then while they were waiting for their sibling.  

1) complete math worksheet (addition review )

2) read the pages for science in the science text    

They were supposed to read their science manual, and answer questions and prepare for their experiment, but somehow both of them did not do this.  So on the way home I ran into walmart while they stayed in the truck to do this.  We then answers the questions orally

They completed their science lab worksheet at home before we did our science experiment.   

I did have to draw out the answer out of nathan, he have the explanation the flame would stay light because the strainer will not be touching the wick.  I told him he had to explain what processes were happening that would cause this.  He kind of looked at me like our you stupid, what kind of explanation do you need, doesn't my answer give you that?  What I wanted was that the temperature would go low.  Etc. 

we did not finish writing our results we ran out of time

Genevieve

Here is an awesome fun facts with Genevieve video, that nathan did not want to be on camera for, so he was ginger.

 

And we completed science just in time to throw our dinners into our new planet boxes, and eat dinner on the way to cheer.  Gigi has cheer 5-7:30 tonight, then we pick up daddy.  

Tomorrow is going to be an insanely busy day!  

9:30 -11 am field trip - recycling plant -make paper

11:30-12:30 physio therapy 

1-3 hockey

3:30-5 CSOPA Gigi

Paper route 

Pack for our trip to barkerville!

Wonder if I will make it through tomorow?

Monday September 14, Day 6 Japan

Today was  a fun day!

Today had a little bit of a rough start but all in all a great day.  Nathan when he woke up was seeing his crazy eye thing again so he couldn't really see.  He also reports that he woke up in the middle of the night and was had the same thing going on.  He did not wake me up, he just stayed in bed.  This is the first time he has reported an event in the middle of the night waking him up.  So when he woke up this morning he was grumpy for the first 1-2 hours.  The typical behaviour we have been seeing at the same time as one of these events. 

First thing we did this morning was do some cleaning up of the house.  We all spent about 1 hour doing this.  We then had breakfast and started doing school work about 10:30. 

I decided to work on our Japan lapbooks.  We read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes this summer.  Both Nathan and Genevieve loved this book, even though it was a little sad, although I was the only one crying as I was reading the book, I guess I was thinking what it would be like to loose a child to cancer.  The book definitely spured lots of conversations, about WWII, cancer, Japan, nuclear bombs, nuclear fission etc.  We had also started a popup banraku puppet theatre, and while we were making these the kids had watched a few videos of what a banraku theatre was, they both though maybe it was something you learn to appreciate.  Although both of them have suggested that it would be great to go to Japan and watch one.

                                                                  sadako on amazon

When we first started, Nathan was not to pleased, he was still dealing with whatever electrical issues were going on in his brain of his.  But as we started working he started getting back to normal.  He started to enjoy what he was doing.  Genevieve was thrilled to be doing this, and loved every minute of it.  We worked on our lapbooks until about 1:30 when we had to go to horse riding.  Nathan said he did not feel well enough to ride, as he had a headache and his ribs still hurt too much to be jostled around on a horse.  So Genevieve rode by herself.   She worked really hard for a solid hour on Ziggy.

When we got back home, Nathan helped a little more on his lapbook but not much.  Genevieve this is all she wanted to do, it is now 7 pm and she is downstairs with Nathan watching a movie, but she has her computer set up, with her cards and is searching for information about Japan to fill in more.  She was adamant when we started this morning that she wanted a really big folder to fill in.  She put in a lot of details on hers as well.  Her card on music was impressive and probably took about 1.5 hours.  She looked up popular Japanese music, then she searched on youtube so she could listen the music, and wrote descriptions of what she thought of the music.  Loved this!

Here are some pictures of their projects so far, I cant tell you how much I love love love this popup banraku theatre!  Its fantastic, and not too finicky!

 

Genevieves extra large lapbook, hard to see how big this really is.

We added a Japanese flag to the front of Nathan's, I did help Nathan with this.

I love how the theatre lays flat and pops out.  Seriously really cool project!

See look how cool the theatre is, hard to tell in this picture but the stage pops up too!

Nathan's I am not sure if Nathan will add anything more to his or not...






 

Update :  It is now 10:40 at night and Genevieve has just come into my room very excited to show me all she has been working on since I put her to bed at 8.  She had a bunch of books she could read on Japan, but no computer.  Wow I think she filled out about 20 cards to put on her folder. 

She was also extremely excited about doing these and asked if she could do more of them, she said she would not mind doing these in her spare time, not part of school, because she really liked doing it.  Then she asked if she could learn Japanese, and if it possible for us to travel to all the countries we will be studying.  She asked if it would be to expensive to go to Japan.  I told her to ask Jeff.  Funny enough there was a really good deal to go to Japan, and I had texted jeff saying lets go, and he said, why do you want to go to japan, what is there to see there.  Maybe Genevieve can show him her project and he can see there is lots to see in Japan.  I did tell Genevieve my plan was to do 1 country a month, she would asked if she could do more then this, and do it when she is finished her work before Nathan etc.  Not sure when she is planning on doing all of this, because she really doesn't have much spare time at all, but I loved her enthusiasm and how much she loved doing this lap book. 

Friday september 11 day 5

I think today was a pretty successful day so far.  Everyone was in a good mood and ready to do schoolwork today. 

I had not mentioned about the mix-up in our science lessons for MBTP, and why we have not started science yet...  Well the cover on our science curriculum said energy level 9-11.  I read the lesson we were supposed to be doing and it was asking us to read a completely different book then I had ordered from MBTP.  I was really confused, emailed the company and said did you change the book etc...  no they had not changed it.  Hmm still really confused and then they said I know the cover says 9-11 but does the inside say 11-13?  Ding ding ding, that was it.  But I already ordered the book that went with the 11-13 because honestly I thought this looks like a cool book and I think the kids would like it better.  The one for the 9-11 was maybe a little young for them.  So both Nathan and Genevieve said they really wanted to do the unit from 11-13 so we are. 

1) we read the first 3 pages of Energy:25 projects investigate why we need power and how we get it done by Kathleen M Reilly

Energy on amazon

 2) Answer questions
- while springs (not the season) can be sources of stored energy, what are some other naturally occurring objects that store energy
- What is evidence of the presence of energy?

3) Next activity was a type of energy worksheet.  Both Nathan and Genevieve needed help with this at times, but mostly able to figure this out by themselves.  The both were able to figure out that there may actually be two different types of energy.  Such as a skateboard is Mechanical energy, but there could be some thermal energy as you scrape the board along a rail... 

As I am looking back at what we did today, I realize that we actually were supposed to divide this into two days, and we were not supposed to do all these activities today, oh well, we were behind on science anyway!

4) vocabulary worksheet, Nathan completed his quickly, and correctly, Genevieve had a couple we had to rearrange with the help of Nathan

5) survey of energy in your neighbourhood.  They both went out together and did this as a team, Nathan walked ginger, and was in charge of picking up poop, and helping determine what to write.  Genevieve was in charge of holding the clipboard and writing all the things they discovered.   

Next up we had lunch, as we were getting ready, I asked Nathan and Genevieve to please do a little bit of picking up since we were having the EA over for the first time.  Well Nathan was feeling quite faint and well was pretty useless, so he layed in the chair mostly and occasionally tried to help pickup up a little.  Genevieve made us grilled cheese, as I hurriedly cleaned off our dining room table which was covered in schoolbooks.

After lunch the EA arrived.  Nathan reports a very positive experience.  They worked together on a research project on sea turtles.  Nathan was quite proud of what he had accomplished and wanted to show me what he had done.  The EA was here from 1-4. 

During the EA time, Genevieve and I had some 1:1 time.  We started with Institute for excellence in writing.  She first watched the video, then did her note taking.  She then had to write her own short paragraph on sea snakes.  

After she was finished that she started her research on sea turtles, she was not very interested in doing research on sea turtles.  I think she is quite tired as usually she is quite happy to do writing.  

Kids are playing for 1/2 while I write this and then they will deliver their papers, we have switched with our neighbor friends so we can deliver on Fridays instead of Thursdays. 

I think I am going to like Fridays as we can sure get a lot of school work accomplished in 1 day.  We worked from 9-4 with a 1/2 hour lunch break.  I think that is pretty impressive, and since in the morning we did all science and broke it up kids didn't get too tired at all....

And Genevieve's art for the day she did this while we were first meeting the ea and getting settled. 

Well nathan after paper deliveries was saying he felt unwell and dizzy.  He declined a play date with friends down the road, and then about 1/2 hour later said he wanted to go and felt okay, so I let him run down, Gigi was already down there. 

About 15 minutes later I get a phone call from my friend come down right away nathan has fainted.  I asked is he conscious, she replies she doesn't know.  I jump in my car, drive down the hill and see about 20 people surrounding nathan.   It turns out he didn't not go unconscious, but his friend had an accident and they hit each other nathan ended up with a bike handle in his ribs.  Poor guy initially could not breath and was making very raspy attempts to breath.  A very panicky dad on the block witnessed and called 911 as he was really concerned with Nathan's breathing.   I guess nathan was trying to tell the dad not to call 911 but he could not speak.  Poor guy was really scared he broke a rib.  There is swelling and bruising, but he seems much better now.   So I will wait until tomorow and if it is still painful to breath we will go get an X-ray.  Poor guy just can't get a break.  Very thankful my good friend lives down the street.  And I am starting to think Gigi would be a good ER dr or nurse.  She doesn't seem to panic through anything , she calmly told the dad, I have already got my friends mom, she is calling my mom right now, as we speak she should be here soon.  As I get down to the bottom of the hill I see Gigi her arms in the air flagging me down.  I said good job staying calm Gigi she says well I knew he want going to die lol.