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
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| I think this is Genevieves favourite card so far |
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| I think this is my fav |
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| Nathan haloween |
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going out with friends
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| isnt she cute! |
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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!
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