1st hockey tournament

Hockey

Nathan had a hockey tournament in Hope this weekend and what a great experience it was.  It was perfect that my parents live in hope so we could stay at their house and have some quiet time to rest between games.  The first game was against Hope and was very rough.  Nathan scored the first goal of the game!!! Yeah nathan.  He got checked his legs taken out from him and the other player smashed him into the boards from behind.  A penalty was called, but I was a little concerned to see that play.  I was already half closing my eyes as I was saying oh man this game is really chippy!  Nathan didn't miss a shift but I could tell he was not 100percent.  When he got home the verdict was a sore and swollen ankle from being smashed into the boards.   Voltaren and hot baths came to the rescue.  He managed to play every game!  They won all 5 games and advanced to the final 2 teams. Unfortunately our goal tender broke his glasses right before the game!  They ended up loosing the game 7-0.  It was some pretty great hockey to watch especially the 1/4 final game.  Very quick hockey.   Nathan had to definitely push himself to keep up. 

Now it's Monday and the aftermath.  He went to bed at 7 pm Sunday night.  He has a migraine today. He payed on the coach in the basement in the dark for a few hours.  He's starting to feel better now at 2 pm.  We are now trying to encourage him to complete some of his schoolwork now.  

Genevieve has started her tuck everlasting.  Her first assignment is to make a vocabulary book.  She is supposed to draw a picture for each vocabulary.  Any guesses how long this will take?  I had decided to let nathan and Genevieve do seperate novel studies at some points this year so that they can work more independently and I think it will help Genevieve decide what she wants to spend more time on.  I am letting her work through at her own pace and if she wants to spend 2 hours at making her dictionary that's ok.  I am sure nathan will have more sick days and Gigi can just take more time on her assignments which she enjoys having the time to go deeper with them.  

And guess what is happening right now?  Nathan is cuddled up with me on the couch as I type this and he is reading the hobbit on his Kobo!  He is getting used to the functions of his kobo.  He is excited that he can look up words right away!  He always asks me when he is reading for definitions so this is going to work great.  He just looked up the word porthole.  Yes he knew it a little but he really likes fully understanding.  He doesn't like that you can't flip back and look at the maps as easy if it was a real book.  But I think he will get used to this, we found out how to find them easy on the table of contents.  He is finding the print easier to read then in a printed book.  Yeah!  I was thinking it would be easier as I find it easier to read on a kobo. 

Hello its been a while...

So you know you have not updated the blog in a while, when your mother mentions, hey what have you guys been up to in school, I haven't seen the blog updated in a while.  My GI issues have kept me pretty tired so I have been finding it difficult to update at night, when I usually do.

Health

We have been doing okay, but have had some challenges.  Nathan has been having 1-2 migraines a week for about the last 6-8 weeks.  Thankfully the migraines seem to be less complex, they are just the typical nausea, with throwing up, malaise, tiredness, and of course a headache.  I am unsure of the cause of the increase.  My thoughts are 1 of 3 things... 1)needs an increase in meds, he has been on the same dose for 2 years, 2)the increase strain on his body from hockey, if this is the case, I would asssume it would improve as he builds up strenght, 3)good all puberty.  I have an email in to his pediatrician, to see what he thinks we should do.  Yesterday Nathan had a migraine, Nathan denied it was a migraine, until the headache came, he was insisting, it must be the flu.  Of course mom is always right, you can see the colour of his skin change before he gets a migraine.  He stayed in bed all day until 3 pm, and then layed on the couch after, the headache came around 5 pm, but was not too intense.  He was able to fall asleep right away when he went to bed at 8:30 with a mild headache remaining.  So he has been having 1-2 of these days a week!  uggg this makes school a little challenging.    Thankfully, we have decided to let Nathan stay home by himself this year for a few hours at a time.  It is not that I do not trust him, he is the kid that follows the rules, and I think would be able to handle an emergency...  except if that emergency was him going unconscious.  I however can not continue to worry about this as he will have these worries even as an adult, and its not like he is going to have someone with him all the time.  He really wants to have the independence, and he is ready for it, its just me I think who is not.

Hockey

Nathan scored his first goal, and then a second goal in the same game.  His coach got the puck for him and taped on it that it was his first goal, pretty awesome thing to do!  I had just had a talk with his coach before the game about his EDS diagnosis, as they are supposed to have a online medical log, but it isnt available yet, they are just switching over to it this year.  I was leaving for a few minutes to pick up Genevieve and figured well I better tell the coach.  I said that sometimes you may see that Nathan does not look like he is trying because he is having an off day.  The coach immediately responded that there was no way he would ever think that of Nathan, as you can see every practice he has ever been to he puts in an amazing amount of effort at everything.  He commented that you would never know it was his first year at minor hockey and that he must be pretty smart as you can see him on the ice looking at everything going on and trying to figure out what to do next, he is aware of everything going on on the ice.  It was pretty great to hear that he could see Nathans heart and that when Nathan does do something he gives it everything he has.  Unfortunately he was too ill yesterday to go to practice because of his migraine.  I am looking forward to the year ahead with this coach and seeing how much Nathan improves.  I asked him why his skating seems better in games then practice, he told me that in games he doesnt think about it and just does it, but in practice, he is trying to perfect it, so he is trying to get the perfect technique, so when he plays he can get it right...

Cheer

Genevieve is doing well in cheer, she was a little discouraged the other week, when she had a bad mishap with a handspring at practice, when she went to her privates after the incident she hurt her arm, she was scared and was not able to perform the way she is used to.  I had a talk with her about the fact that she did not fall back, she is still going forward, but sometimes you have to start with basics again, but in the long run you are still farther ahead then where you were.  It will not take you as long to get your confidence back etc.  The talk seemed to help her.  I find with Genevieve she can get discouraged if she finds a task to hard, she shuts down a little, it does not happen often, but most often it is in cheer or in voice, the things she loves most, and perhaps the things she puts the most pressure on herself for.  I am trying to help her look at situations like these, and break down the steps, and to accept the challenge

Genevieve has planned a group bonding night for her Youth 2 team, she is going to have them over and she is going to teach them all to make 4 cards with her friend Anna.  Both anna and Genevieve have been making and selling cards together.  I think it will be a fun night with her friends and a good experience for her to teach something to her peers.

School

We have completed our language arts unit on the Giver, we ended it with watching the movie, we had a long discussion on the differences between the two.  I think both actually preffered the movie, it had more of a protagonist antagonist conflict going on.  Nathan to the end did not really enjoy this book, to him it was just ok, Genevieve liked it, but I think she is like me, she enjoys any book.

Chemistry - Nathan is on to chapter 3 for chemistry he is still enjoying it.  Jeff found this really cool app, you print out paper and make cubes with different elements on all sides, you put the cubes together go to the app and you see what happens when you combine different elements.  Nathan was not as impressed as jeff and I, I think the technology impressed Jeff and I, but since the kids have grown up with this, I think it just wasnt as cool, as doing it in real life...  Genevieve thought it was neat, but does not show a really keen interest in chemistry yet.

Math-  Nathan is still struggling with arithmatic.  So what we both came up with was that I would give him a few long division questions each day and a few fraction questions he would have to answer before he moved onto life of fred.  I was suprised that when I suggested this he thought it was a good idea and did not complain about it.  For the long division his brain just works funny is all I can say...  He knows how to do it, but because it is basically memorizing some steps, it does not come easy, he will forget exactly all the steps.  I keep on encouraging him and telling him that he gets the hardest stuff first, he knows exactly what to do to solve all of the problems he is given.  He can set up all the equations.  I know for most students this is the hardest step, how do I solve this problem.  Nathan would be able to easy answer if he used a calculator for everything.  But I think this will help solve our problem, because with repetitiveness of only doing maybe 4 questions total a day before he starts life of fred he wont get bored, but he will get the repitition he needs.

Oh I found the first question in life of fred that stumped me on how to explain it to Nathan.  I was very thankful for facebook and some pretty great moms.  Also I learned that we can email the author of life of fred and he will personally respond to our math conundrums!  How awesome is that.

so the question is number 5.  we understood that W-n was 0 but why is N-W and empty set and what exactly is an empty set.  Well just saying it was empty and thats what it is did not satisfy Nathan.  We ended up leaving it for the day, and when I had a better response for him the next day, he was satisfied.   Each number in n corresponds to a number in W with one element left over... call it 0 and so the cardinality (size) of n is countably infinite but W is "countably infinite plus one.  this helped...  and a few other things like looking up on wikipedia what an empty set was etc, and explaining to him that he would learn more about it in higher math when he does graphing

- Genevieve, I have been picking through rightstart and getting Genevieve to do some worksheets that I think she can do to review some of the stuff I think she has holes in.  Today we worked on factors, I  think she was easily able to learn it because we have done this with fraction, but just did not give a name for it.  

German 

Genevieve has decided to study German this year.  We have started her on the free program from the library mango languages.  I think this will be a good fit for her because her Piano/voice teacher is German, and she is learning many german songs to sing, as for the RCM she needs to sing in a foreign language as well.  She has done very well on her German songs so far, and I think learing German will help her with singing.  She already in her songs knows how to pronounce letters differently and that in german they dont have the same sounds as us.  

Nathan foreign language - I am thinking we may ask for an exemption on his IEP for this one.  We only have so much time for studies, and we are just able to put in the basics for study, let alone all the extras.  I think with his health at the moment it does not make sense to study a foreign language, especially since maybe devoting 1 hour a week is not really going to get him farther ahead.  I am thinking we can try and get him started on foreign language again in grade 9, or earlier if we are able to get more schooling in a day.  

social studies

we need to get back on this...  we haven't done any in the last few weeks, well any ancient egypt.

Here are a few pictures from the month

I think this is Genevieves favourite card so far 

I think this is my fav

Nathan haloween

going out with friends

isnt she cute!

Geneiveve carved most of the pumpkins this year
I was so impressed, but Nathan carved a pumpkin for the
first time this year!  He choose a simple design but
was able to do it himself, it shows his hands are
strengthening up!

October 3, and 4th

October already....

Monday Art class

They worked on their gingerbread houses that they made last week, this week the clay had been given a week to get leather hard, so they could add the details.

Nathan went to bed sunday with a headache and woke up with the same headache, he came into my bed in the morning clutching his head.  He said his body hurt everywhere as well.  Nathan had a hockey practice on saturday, and then a game on sunday, I think this is where his muscle aches are coming from.  I am hoping that as his muscles get more used to the level of hockey he will be less sore.  The headache, well I guess Nathan missed his midday dose of propranolol on sunday.  He will typically get a migraine the next day if he misses a dose.  We got up and had some breakfast and Nathan had his morning pill, he felt a little better after, and said he was well enough for an art lesson.  By the end of the art lesson you could see him sliding down hill, he started fighting with Genevieve.  After the lesson, Nathan decided to have a bath to help with his migraine, he was a little grumpy but survived.  He ended up keeping his headache for the entire day, so we did not manage any other school work.  Nathan started to think that maybe he actually had the flu, because he of course was suffering from nausea as well.  Genevieve spent the afternoon making cards, she has a goal of making 50 cards so she can go with anna to a craft fair to sell them.

Tuesday

Nathan woke up feeling much better (I knew it was a migraine Nathan).  Although he woke up feeling well, he did not wake up until 10:30, I did not want to wake him, as I figured he was recovering.

So we started the moring off slowly, nathan did laundry and dishes while Genevieve made breakfast.  

Language Arts 2 hours

The giver Lesson 9.  Nathan really is not enjoying this book very much, which surprises me, when I picked it, I thought he would enjoy thinking about an alternate society.  I think because it is so far beyond realistic that he just can not even relate to it.  Todays lesson was more on grammer, they did a worksheet on passive verb and active verb.  I have to admit that I really am not a grammer lover, to me grammer should be innate, you kind of learn it by doing it, although I am certainly not the greatest at writting, maybe this is my problem?  I find this kind of lesson tedious, okay where is the subject of the sentence, where is the verb, and now is it passive or active.....  We got a few of them wrong and I am thankful for the teacher guide.  But I guess the whole point of the excersise was to see that it is usually better to use an active subject instead of a passive.  So I guess this can help with your writing. Activity 2 was about emotions attached to colour, I think they both found this activity enjoyable.

Science 2 hours

While Nathan was at piano/voice Nathan worked on his science, he finished his lab for the first unit.  He then read chapter 2.  He then begged me to figure out how to log into memorize academy, as he wanted to start working on the next set of elements.  I had someone forgot how to login, but because he was so desperate and excited to do this i found it today, and he memorized 21-30 today.  He already has 1-19 down pat.  I was amazed that after watching the video once he was able to do it, but he did not have fluency, he watched it 3 times today and then was fluent from 1-30.  I think memorize academy helps Nathan because it gives him a picture to help him, he needs to have the visualization for it to make sense.

Genevieves extra's

Genevieve worked on her monologue today

voice lessons 40 minutes working on her song for her CSOPA audition.  Genevieve reported that the song felt much more natural for her to sing Capella for her today.  She just had to work a little on the beginning and ending of her song.

Piano lesson - 20 minutes, I am not sure what she worked on, but she has been practicing everyday for her piano, which I am sure was evident to marlene

Cheer - 5-8 cheerleading

she was picked up by her friends mom to take her to out for dinner before she gets to cheer, she was pretty excited about that.

cardiologist visit

Nathan had his appointment with Cardiology today.  I recieved a phone message on wednesday about Nathans appt, I was confused when I listened as it mentioned surrey hospital, or at least thats what it sounded like.  I had to listen to the message 6 times to hear the phone number to call, well I called and they only answer the phones on tuesdays and fridays, well that would not help my appt was for friday morning.  Ended up calling childrens tracking down somene who has been to the outreach clinic to try and tell me where this place is I was supposed to be going.  I ended up getting a little lost anyway, but made it to the appt in time.  But crazy thing is they probably booked me for surrey thinking it was closer, it was only about 10 minutes closer, and I did not like the stress of not knowing where I was going, childrens I am familiar with.  Then they also booked us with a different cardiologist, we have seen the same cardiologist since Nathan was 5, very weird that they booked us differently.  We liked this new cardiologist anyway and had a good visit, he reported that we could wait 2 years before we see him again, unless there is any problems.  He was at a loss to explain, Nathans episode last summer where his heart stopped, causing him to stop breathing and have a seizure.  He is hoping that it was neurocardiogenic, as was his pediatricians thoughts on this.  He is hoping it was a one off, as he did not think jeff would survive another time if he had to see Nathan do this again. lol  He actually asked if I was still married to jeff, after I told him it happened after Jeff squeezed Nathan... I told him I was lucky jeff was still alive, since he does not really like medical emergencies.  Jeff sure picked a great Gene pool for not liking emergencies hey!  He also suggested looking into getting Nathan on a time released beta blocker so he does not have to remember to take it 3 times a day, I will look into this and see if it is available for Nathans dosage, and speak to his pediatrician about this.  That would definitely help only having to remember to take it once.

After the visit ,we had a great afternoon with our friends Tyler and Cody.  Now I am exhausted, and Genevieve and Nathan are making dinner.  Well actually I think they both talked about it and Nathan turned on the oven, and brought up the stuff from the freezer, I think Genevieve is now in charge of putting the pakoras and potatoes in the oven.  Who are these strange kids that are working together and making dinner?

I almost forgot the learning opportunities today

Genevieve did 1 hour of piano theory on the way to the appt, funny thing, Nathan who is not doing traditional piano classes this year, was helping Nathan with her theory.  When I asked how he knew it, he said I dont know I learned it, and then he was telling Genevieve how she should be able to figure out these things.  Marlene had told me that if Nathan wanted she had no doubts he could probably pass a RCM theory class.  Why does he find theory easy?

Next learning happened at the cardio appt, yesterday Genevieve assembled the model we have of a human heart, and today she got to watch the Echo of Nathan's heart, we were able to see all the chambers/valves, and how the heart looked like when it pumped, and what it looks like with blood flow.   Now I am really happy that she choose to study the human body yesterday.

Then on the way home, I quizzed them in math drills.

So again not much learning but we did fit in some learning when we could.

Genevieve also made some cards tonight.

tuesday sept 27 - September 29

Well this week is a little wacky for our schedule, so we have been doing things a little differently and going with the flow, a little unschooling happening this week.  I am actually enjoying this week and I think the kids are too, but I dont think I am an unschooler, and I dont really think the kids are either, but it is a fun break.

So Genevieve has her CSOPA auditions this week on wedesday, except it was cancelled because of a city wide power outage.  So she gets another week to perfect her audition pieces.  Genevieve has been working very hard on this and has struggled a little bit as her monologue has some challenges and she has never sung Capella before, and I guess the song she choose is quite difficult for her to sing this way, it changes keys a few times and is just challenging.

Tuesday Genevieve spent all of her school hours working on her audition for CSOPA as it was supposed to be the next day and she was not quite ready, I knew she would not have much time on wednesday to rehearse so she had to have it by tuesday.  Nathan worked on a typing program for a couple of hours,  and memorize academy chemistry.  He seems to have the first 20 elements down pat.  Genevieve went to cheer practice on tuesday.

Wednesday - Genevieve woke up and was able to have her monologue perfect yeah!  so she worked on adding expression, we worked again all morning on her csopa.  Wednesday was really weird though as jeff was supposed to fly out at 9 am, he kept on getting delayed in his flight until it was cancelled and he was put on a flight for 2 pm.  Now this 2 pm flight really messed with my day, as I was supposed to be at physiotherapy at this time.  So Jeffs dad came to the rescue and took Jeff to the airport for us.  Nathan and Genevieve both had physio with Janet and music with Kim.  Kim worked with Genevieve on her song for CSOPA which was fantastic.  And then the power went out.  It was like and appocalypse happened in chilliwack, it took over an hour to get home, when normally it is no longer then 10 minutes, and we were running out of gas!  We made it... Csopa was cancelled, even though Genevieve was ready she was happy to have 1 extra week to prepare.

Thursday -  Nathan woke up and starting making breakfast, without being asked, I helped guide him a little.  And today really was an unschool day!  We were sitting Nathan was just finishing up his typing program and Nathan asked, can I make the potato clock, and I thought why not, it was not what I had planned to do at all, but I thought hmm they could work on that bythemselves for a bit.  Well Genevieve said, well that does not really interest me, can I do something else sciency like study the human body, so I said sure, she grabbed a bunch of books and activities and headed into the other room.  So Nathan starts looking at the potato clock kit we have, then he has a million and 1 questions about how this is working, I know I cant just say the potato has electorlytes in it and electrons flow through.  I tried to find a video that detailed the science behind but nothing was great at explaining this, umm dont other kids want to know the science behind making a potato clock.  Ended up I looked in his text book, he was not happy to be jumping ahead, mom I am not there yet.  But I convinced him we needed to read a few pages on ions to understand how we are getting a positive and negative charge with the copper and zinc strips.  I think he was glad we read in the end, even if he was concerned about going out of order because he really did understand what we were doing in the end.  He then grabbed a bunch of other things to attempt to light them up or increase the strenght of his battery.  He ended up playing with this for well over 2 hours.  Genevieve looked at the human body stuff for about 2 hours then practiced singing.

We then delivered the papers, and Genevieve went to an extra voice lesson with Marlene to try and perfect her song.  I asked Marlene if she could fit Genevieve in, I thought since Genevieve has been putting in such a great effort the last few weeks I would pay for an extra 1/2 hour for her, ended up Marlene wanted to do it for free.  When genevieve was at voice, nathan worked on his chemistry lab that is required to finish chapter 1.  At first he was like what, I have to design my own experiment...  uggg, but the first one is well layed out and really easy for him to figure out, it was great to build up confidence.  I told him to trust me and that he was liking this chemistry and that in real life you design your own experiments, you dont have an experiment that is already layed out in front of you, if you are trying to figure something out.  I remember the first time I did this in university I was very intimidated by the process, I am glad that he will be miles ahead of me in this area.

filling in his chemistry lab at academy of music

this was one of the pages we read to understand ions, and what
was happening with the potato

Nathan enjoyed this, but what a cheap kit, I bet the
box cost more money...  I wish it came with a book
that explained the science behind the experiment

Genevieve and her human body, I am wondering if her recent
surgery experience has made her interested in the human body?
Maybe Genevieve with be our physician, or nurse?

And now Genevieve is at cheer, yeah for carpooling this year, and Nathan came up and made dinner without being asked!  I made sure to let him know how much this helps me, it really does.

Friday - we go to see Nathan's cardiologist for a checkup, so maybe some math in the car but that is it

monday September 26

ART

Jessica, how we love jessica, this week they worked with clay, I think this is both Nathan and Genevieves favourite medium to work with, they started on making some gingerbread houses and some birds.

Cooking

Jeff is leaving on wednesday to start work again...

So I decided I needed to put a bunch of food in the freezer for the days I am too tired and unwell.  Unfortunately with the new addition of crohns it seems to be more, but I do have a GI appt Oct 5 yeah, hopefully he will have some miracles for me.

So after art, I was in the middle of preparing 25 meals to put in the freezer, so instead of doing schoolwork I got the kids to help me for a bit, Genevieve lasted longer then Nathan but it was still very helpful, Jeff had gone into vancouver for some testing

Nathan seems to be dealing with change a little better now, we bought a new coffee table and it arrived today, he did quite well and was not bothered by it at all...

Genevieve

Genevieve has been diligently practicing piano/voice and CSOPA.  It is a lot of work... she is practicing about 1 hour a day, today she practiced probably close to 2 hours.

this coming week

this week looks to be another somewhat busy distracted week, wednesday we will take jeff to the airport, so we wont school that day, as then we have physio after, and Friday will be another day in vancouver as Nathan has a cardiologist appointment.  Maybe some schooling on saturday or Sunday if we dont have early morning hockey games.  I dont have a schedule yet for hockey which is driving me slightly nuts, as I need to plan these things out!

week of Sept 19-25

the Weekend

thankfully we did do some schoolwork this past weekend, we did some 1 day, but since as you can see from this week we did not have very may sit down days it was good that we did.

Monday September 19

Art

Jessica showed up at 10 am ready for the kids art lesson, I had forgot all of us were in our pj's and just starting our language arts, we had a late start.  oops.  I will get the hang of our schedule, I think especially when jeff gets back to work, it seems slightly off with him at home so much, things just run differently.  Not that I want him to go back sooner, we have loved having him home!

the kids did some doodling kind of stuff with Jessica for the past few monndays

Math

worked a little on math

After math, I was tired so we did not continue on with our studies.

Tuesday

Tuesday was definately a write off unless you count it as health and careers or science....  learning about the hand maybe...  

We had a post op appointment for Genevieves hand surgery, but it was at st.Pauls hospital, so that was an all day event, we stopped at ikea on the way back to pick up a few more storage units to re-organize our basement.  The kids have been helping on reorganizing all of our things in the basement.

Hockey

we recieved an email in the morning letting us know there would be a practice from 8-9:30, I hope there arent very many of these late night practices, dont they know we go to bed at 8:30, Nathan does not do well with little sleep, he needs to go to bed...

Cheer

5-8

Genevieve got the all clear to go ahead and go back to cheer, she stayed away from handsprings but was able to participate in everything else.

Wednesday

Doctors and more doctors

So the morning was spent with Nathan and Jeff at the dentist, so no school work again... 

We then had physiotherapy

and then CSOPA 4:30-8

Thursday

School work

Yes it did happen I just dont remember any of the details, I am sure it must have entailed Language arts and math, and prob some science and maybe some socials... why did I not write this post earlier??

Cheer

5-8

Genevieves cheer coach was so proud and happy with Genevieve that she tried and completed her roundoff back handspring so soon after surgery.

Friday

Another day without formal sit down learning but we definitely did some schooling.  We went for a hike on the Hudsons bay company trail.  We went with the Hope mountain centre and a rein-actor.  So much great information to be shared with us it was fantastic.  We took our friend Tyler along with us as well.  I think the kids thought the scary logging road was 1/2 of the adventure.  I sure hope we can get a few more of these outings organized they were so fantastic with the kids!

I had to take this photo of Genevieve, she looked
so grown up here

Getting ready to fire

in true historic fashion the gun misfired on the first round, had to
reload, definately helped the kids understand how rain afected guns
and how hard they would be to use when walking the trail in those days

cute little frog

oh a funny fact we learned about from our leader was that there are such a thing called mountain beaver.  I really thought he was pulling my leg when he was showing us there mounds on the side of the trail!  I still was unsure until we googled on the way home.  Sure enough there is such an animal called mountain beaver, who does not live in the water!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_beaver

some of the pictures and maps they used, there were a lot of lessons
on first nations and ecology on our walk.

Saturday

Hockey game, Nathan is loving minor hockey, I think his endurance has to improve a little and maybe his skating speed, but he is still keeping up with everyone.  

Sunday

Hockey again...

Genevieve is liking going to the library when Nathan is playing, she checked out a bunch of books on ancient egypt this week, and she was texting me while there, asking me if I wanted a few books she thought I would like for homeschooling :)

Thursday September 15, Friday September 16

Thursday

Csopa 

Genevieve loved loved loved her 1st day at CSOPA this year.  She said she loved all the girls, there are a few boys who do not listen and pay attention, but for the most part, all the kids are serious and want to be there.  She came home quite excited that there will be auditions, in 2 weeks, she must prepare a musical theatre voice piece that is no longer then 2 minutes, and she has a dialogue that can not be longer then 2 minutes either.  She was unclear on what the third aspect of her audition was, but she knows there are 3 parts and together it must be under 5 minutes, I am wondering if the last part is interview questions, if she is still unclear after next weeks class, she will ask her teachers.  She is loving that she has multiple teachers that teach different aspects of musical theatre.  She came home and was excited to start rehersing her dialogue.  Another exciting piece of news is that we found out that one of the girls in her class is moving in 2 houses down the road, super exciting news.

School work

the day went well and I think Nathan is actually liking his school work.  

We continued on with Language arts, science, socials, and math

I think we got a lot accomlished especially considering I had an ophthalmologist appointment I had to go to mid-morning.

This is one of Nathan's favourite spots to do schoolwork

I texted when I was at my appointment to see if the kids were doing their work,
this is the picture I got sent back

Cheer

5-8 pm

Friday

Language Arts

We read chapter 11 and 12 in the giver today

We had 2 assignments for this today, they were both to do with imagery.  Assignment 1 involved drawing a picture of a memory and then filling in a sheet about senses, and then writing a paragraph from that.  For Nathan since he did not have his computer I did not get him to write a paragraph.  

Genevieve did complete both assignments but it did take her a long time writing it out. I think it took her almost 2 1/2 hours

Genevieves picture with her writing

Science

Wow is Nathan ever liking his science and understanding it.  He answered all of his questions orally except for a few where he wrote out the answers, as they required more math problems.  He even waited for about 1/2 hour after I served lunch to stop as he was so engrossed in his science, he was answering his end of chapter questions.

Here are some bigger thinking questions Nathan had for me after reading.  

- what determines the rotation of the electrons in the electron cloud, is it magnetism

- can the charge in atoms power things, can you harness that energy, or create energy with it.

getting cozy reading about Chemistry

here he is anwering questions while his sister is eating

so I know that this is hard to follow, I have shown
Nathan how to set up his questions so he has all the
information there, but I know he does not generally show steps
But he does have it correct and knows what he is doing
he just did not show that there is 2 hydrogens he is counting, but
he knew that each hydrogen has an AMU of 1 (since there is 2 he wrote 2),
since there is 1 oxygen it is 16 and then you add it together.

I did test his knowledge by asking him what he would do if you had
the same question but you wanted to know how many g were in
3 moles instead of 1

So we worked on school work until about 2 pm, then Genevieve worked on CSOPA and voice for about an hour.

Day 2, day 3, and day 4

Friday 

Language Arts

Moving beyond the page "the Giver" lesson 2

Nathan working on his utopia poster, I found it interesting
to look at the difference in his handwriting from friday
and then if you look at today, it is totally different
Nathan was having a really good day today (wednesday)

Nathans vision of utopia, I think he actually liked finding pictures to cut out and put
on his poster to make a collage

Genevieves collage, I helped her with cutting and I scribed for her

All other subjects

oh my this is the problem with not blogging daily, umm we did some math and we read from our usborne textbook for History of the ancient world, it was a lot of reading required, so we didnt do any activities with history today.

Monday

Monday funday, because Jessica our art teacher comes!  We work for an hour in the morning before she arrives, and then the kids have art from 10-12, Jessica and I spent about an hour of that time going over what we would like to learn this year and how she can incorporate what we are going to be studying, I added her to my google docs which has our lesson plan.  I should have done this earlier, I sent last years to her much earlier.

after Jessica left we completed some math, and really my brain I can not remember all that we did but here is a picture with Ginger at least ready to study

Tuesday

Genevieves first sale!

So Genevieve had an order from her piano teacher for a birthday card for her brother.  Her brother is a forester, and so she asked Genevieve if she could custom make her a card for him, with something about forestry.  

Genevieve woke up at 7 am, and borrowed a few supplies from her friend anna, and worked on this card for 3 hours.  I am pretty impressed at her work, especially since she is still working 1 handed, she is amazingly ambidextrous!

I did cut out the fox's body for her because her
left had was pretty hard to cut with

left side has corrugated brown cardstock with a stamped wood grain
and a 3d skunk!

Language Arts

MBTP "the Giver" lesson 3

Oh boy, good thing you warned me about the mature topics in this book Cara ha ha.  Today was about stirrings, and thankfully sex education in this house must be working pretty good, both of them knew what was going on, ha ha!  

for this excersise they were then supposed to make a book
for a timeline and draw pictures etc, well for
history I had already decided to switch
a lesson to include art, so I told them not to do this
as it would take up so much time.

I think we will have to work with Nathan to work
on critical thinking issues and to be able to see the
other side to an arguement.  I am pretty sure he can
see many sides, but he is very stuborn, and when he
thinks he knows something is right or wrong that is it
Thank goodness he has a very strong moral grounding
otherwise this could be tricky, but sometimes he just
needs to loosen up a bit

ambidextrous much? this is genevieves, and her left hand!
It took her much longer and a little messy

genevieve

Social Studies

I forget what lesson number we are on, we had started this unit last year and completed the mesopotamia units in it, so we are a little ways in anyway

We finished doing our assigned reading, then there first assignment was to colour a map in and label, instead I thought it would be a good project to add to our history of the world timeline, so I got them to draw the map in their timelines and use watercolour paints.  This ended up needing to be a two day project as it needed to dry, and we were running out of time.

Math

working on times tables still, Nathan is actually now enjoying this go figure! Anyway it will help them both out a lot so I am happy.

Music

Genevieve has piano/voice from 2:30-3:30 every tuesday.

We talked to her piano teacher about what to expect this year.

She suggested Genevieve take the grade 2 voice examination this year as Genevieve has already been singing mostly level 2 or above songs and that it would be a good place for her to get accustomed to the Royal Conservatory of Music examinations.  Genevieve is excited about this, and she has already chosen 1 of her songs to sing.  Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge, by Mozart, she loves singing in German, and as a bonus she also gets to learn the meaning and interpretations of the songs she is singing.  She already knows many of the words that are in her song already, when she was practicing today, she remarked oh oops that is a m and it is pronounced like a n (dont quote me, I have no idea if that is exactly what she said)

In Piano, we talked about that Genevieve would like to take the RCM exams as well but her teacher suggested we wait before we start as she said in Piano it can suck the life out of piano, and she wanted Genevieve to carry on and enjoy.  She suggested she start examinations in 1-2 years for Piano.  But I do think it will be benificial for Genevieve to have both RCM in voice and Piano, so we will continue with that as our goals.

Hockey

Nathan had hockey evaluations tonight.  I am pretty amazed at Nathan's maturity and his ability to handle change!  When Nathan first started homeschool hockey he cried for the first 2 weeks when he started because he did not know what he was doing didnt know anyone etc.  

He was most definately nervous but handled himself so well.  When there were skills that he did not know, he watched first and then took his turn.  He was at practice early and excited but did not make us leave 2 hours early so that is good.  

He did well with the fact parents are no longer allowed into the change room at the peewee age,  he was concerned about tying his skates ,but he got there and guess what, other kids could not tie theirs either, lots of kids waiting for the coaches, or as nathan did he walked out and got dad to help tie his skates.

He was concerned that I would tell the coaches about his EDS and they would not let him play.  I did have to talk with him and explain that yes we would have to tell his coaches about EDS and give them an emergency information card ,because it was not fair to the coaches if we did not, but that he has his pediatricians permission and that is all that is needed for him to play.

Cheer

This year, Genevieves most competitive team is her Youth 2 team, but this year is definately going to be a building year, with a lot of new girls (last year gigi was the new girl on Y2)  Most of the other girls have moved up a division to Junior level 3.  Since Genevieve is not able to do tumbling herself, or stunt, she was helping out some of the other girls with their tumbling skills.  I think this will still be a good year for Genevieve and she loves cheer so much she does not really care what team she is on.  I think it will definately be a skill building and confidence boosting year for her.   I think last year being one of the youngest girls on the team was sometimes hard.

Wednesday

Wow It was a really great day for school I think!

Social studies

the kids finished their maps, while I read our chapters in the "giver"

look how neat this is!  It looks so great, this is Nathan's
He was having a good day today

Genevieve impressive for the wrong hand!

Language Arts

Moving beyond the page

oops I havent taken pictures yet...

Math

carried on with multiplication 

Science

Nathan and I have been talking about Math for a while, he has said he wants to be taught science not to do the inquiry based science, bummer...as I think that is how his brain works.  But today was a great day to start a new science for him.  I had purchased Real Science for kids level II a long time ago, adn I got it out today.  Having a look at it, it is very similar to chemistry 11.  So I gave the book to Nathan and told him it was hard, but if he was willing to work through it then he could do it and that it had labs that he would have to do with it as well.  I told him he would have to read through the required reading answer questions along the way and then we would discuss to make sure he has a good understanding before he is able to do any experiments.  So he took the textbook and started reading, he finished more then I said to read to, and he answered the required math/chemistry questions.  When we discussed and went over the quetions, he said well actually I learned a lot reading it, I didnt really understand the difference between mass and weight before, and I thought I did.  Today for his questions he had to convert from mols to grams and grams to mols, for a few different elements.  I should know this already, Nathan does better when it is harder...

sample question page

Here is a link to the current edition of this textbook Here

Physiotherapy 12:30-2

Nathan is always improving!  His strength is getting up there, we talked about goals being improved upper body strengh, fine motor in his hands and improved proprioception

Genevieve was assessed today as well, as she has been complaining of some things

music therapy - nathan 1/2 hour

Genevieve 1 hour

CSOPA

Genevieve was excited to go today!  she will be the youngest in her class but she wanted to be with more serious students :)  She is happy that her classes will be 3 1/2 hours in length.  I can not wait to see what they end up doing for their production, I loved last years so much and that was a junior class, I can only imagine what this intermediate class will be like.  I am sure she is going to be learning a lot in this class as they bring in choreographers, and her time is also split in each class with a vocal coach and a musical theatre director, so lots more I think this year...