First week of School

Great start to the Year!

I was a little concerned last spring when Nathan has said he would like to return to a regular brick and mortar school for high school starting in grade 10.  So many things popped into my head.  I really was concerned that it would be difficult for him and that it would then be difficult to graduate.  With EDS you just never know when and what is going to hit you next.  So what is any great parent to do but go into panic mode.  I made lists and schedules, and tried to figure out how in the next two years we can get him prepared and ready to return.  I then panicked and thought how can we get him ready in two years, then I though oh my, I only have two years left to homeschool with them.  Well summer school with us was really going well, and Nathan has constantly been showing improvements all over the place.  So I started to panic less and figure out what a realistic time frame and what we can really do to make this a reality for him.  So the plan for Nathan this year education wise is for him to complete 2 courses online, but then that meant he had to take a 2 credit course called intro to online learning as well.  His online courses are French 8 and Science 9.  

Nathan and his first week.  

So I received an email the week before school talking about the intro to online learning course, and then I had to tell Nathan he needs to take this before he starts his online courses.  I thought this was going to go bad, but he went with it and was happy when I told him he gets 2 graduations credits for completing this course.  We had a little trouble as for some reason his courses were not loaded into his account yet, so we had to wait until the Friday before school started to be able to have access.  Nathan worked over the long weekend to get ahead in his online class.  On his own he was working at it, even when jeff and I went out for the day, I think he just wants to get it done.  The very first part of the course he had to watch a video that talked about mis-communication if you don't know computer lingo.  Nathan watched the video and he said I don't get it, why would I have to watch this video.  Ahh Nathan's first experience with filler and getting peoples attention.  I get it I understand why the video was in there, it was to make it fun, a funny little intro to the course.  Nathan is not about filler, he thought it was a waste of time as he had to watch a 3 minute video that he gained little information from.  But he carried on and started moving through the course quickly.  1 week later and he is 60 percent done the course.

He started French on Thursday, he wanted to wait so he had a little bit more of the intro course under his belt so he could navigate Moodle a little better and know what he was doing.  He finished the first couple of French assignments on Thursday and made a grocery list for me so I could go buy his ingredients for his ratatouille assignment.  He was a little annoyed that he had to cook for French class, but I think in the end he was pretty proud of his creation.  He is going to make the ratatouille for grandma and grandpa next week.  He had a video chat with his teacher on Friday and she asked about what activities he is in, and said it was good for her to know just so that if he had a hockey tournament just to shoot her a message, and she would know that he would be doing less that week.  Nathan then told her about his migraines, and was able to tell her their may be days where he can not do any school work.  

Proof he is cooking and his chopping skills have greatly improved!

aww, see he does look happy he made it.

Yes Genevieve is a little terrified to eat this.

Friday Nathan logged into his science, I am picking up his textbook this weekend, so he hasn't started yet.  But he logged in and on the side we saw that there was a online meeting that was mandatory on Wednesday, and he had missed it... oops.  I thought this would upset him, but he was okay and emailed the teacher explaining his plans and what he was doing, that he was trying to complete the intro to online learning first and also he was waiting on his science textbook.

Math, Nathan missed a few days this week, getting excited about his online courses but he has picked that back up, he still has a week left in his physics book, I thought he would be done, but we didn't do any math for the last 3 weeks of summer I believe.  Camping, daddy, and canning got in the way.

Language arts and Socials.  Nathan and Genevieve have both started a unit on medieval history, their LA book is midwifes apprentice, I think Nathan is enjoying medieval history.

Nathan's morning setup

Nathan Health

So I don't know whose kid I have but I think there is someone else or Nathan has someone else's body.  He has grown so much this summer, but he also has grown in strength.  He has been doing hockey camps and workouts at exceed training all summer, and it has greatly paid off.  He had his first physio this Wednesday after having the summer off, and she really can't believe the progress he has made.  Strong encouragement to continue what he is doing.  Another pretty amazing thing is Nathan seems to have more energy, he isn't as tired as he used to get.  So he can do more without fatigue!  This is huge!  I am thinking it has a lot to do with his physical straight, his body does not have to work as hard to keep in his joints, he also has less pain, and pain is a drain.  I have been noticing this all summer but didn't know if it just had to do with summer, and less activities and no school.  But school and hockey started up this week and he has been able to keep up.  Each school day, he has been getting himself up and always starts by 9, somedays he is even up at 8 am and started school with me still being in bed.  Not only is he getting up and doing his work on his own, but he has also been doing school work until about 4 pm, sometimes later.  In the afternoons I have had to run Genevieve out and he is able to continue on working on his own.  So then I thought the test would be hockey, I thought for sure after the first hockey practice he would not be able to wake up, I think the next morning he needed me to get him up, but he was able to get up and do school work that day!  no headache, no fatigue.  He had a game on Thursday and he was okay to do school on Friday, and even had himself up at 8 am.  He has a sore foot and arm, but he is okay, he put some voltaren on it and is thinking that he needs to streghthen his feet.  Physio had mentioned that his feet and ankles are pretty unstable and that is something they can work on.  And hockey... I was almost in tears watching him play.  At first I went to his practice and thought oh my this team sucks, Nathan is one of the better players on this team, and he is a first year bantam, I thought oh no.  Then they had their first game, his team blew out the other team 16:5.  Nathan was able to hold his own well and you could see how much better he was able to skate and generally hold himself up there.  He plays another game tonight, Nathan claims his team does suck and he thinks the other team just sucked more.  We shall see tonight.  They are just playing balancing games where they trade players.  Right now he is on a team with a coach that was an assistant coach of his last year, Nathan liked him and the other coach on the team, Nathan says is good too, I kinda want him to stick on this team, just because at least one of the coaches knows him.   The games are longer this year, so you could see Nathan starting to fall at the end of the third period, so he does have to build up his endurance, but wow, he had some really great shifts.

I am so proud of Nathan and how far he has come in such a short time.  The amount of effort he puts in, is huge, he seems to try at everything.  Sometimes this is hard to see, and when he is tired, he can look lazy, and like he just doesn't care.  I am so happy he is where he is, and I know he would not be here if it were not for our choice to school at home, and the wonderful support we have received from the school.  My heart feels a little less heavy when I think about where Nathan is now, I have confidence that he is going to be successful at whatever he wants to do in life, and that he will be able to find something that he can do to support himself and a family.  I know he will have medical struggles all throughout his life, but I don't think they will be as bad as we were imagining it would be just 5 years ago.

Genevieve and her first week

So everything did not start this week for Genevieve so it seems like we have a little bit more time.  Nathan was a little jealous that Genevieve did not have to do so much school work.  I didn't dare tell him he didn't have to do as much as he was doing... ha ha.  Genevieve is liking how organized I am this year.  I thought I was always organized, but apparently this year, I have totally found my exact level of organization the kids need.  So I watched a video on memorization this summer and I then have made the kids up some flashcard boxes to help with this.   Genevieve is really liking this, Nathan not so much.  I have put in cards in their LA and Socials binders that they have to look at the vocab for the day and study, then they continue to study the vocab words on other days.  

German - 

We are very keen on German this year, and I am determined to make this a successful year for Genevieve.  We have found a study group that will be starting in October on Friday afternoons.  She has also started mango languages again, starting from the beginning.  I am making up flashcards for her on quizlet and printing them for her flashcard box, but she can also go online and play the games that are on quizlet.  I plan on getting Genevieve to do German everyday, 1 lesson a day.  We will see in October when the study group forms, what we will add or do.  She also has Marlene her Piano '/voice teacher to help her.  I may get her voice teacher to speak some of the words so we can record them.  If I upgrade my account in quizlet, I can upload voice, so that she can hear the correct pronounciation every time, I will see what we end up needing.  Genevieve is a natural at most of the pronunciation.  She is working on two German songs at the moment.  An die laute, and Marienwurmchen.

Language arts and Socials Same as Nathan.

Math

Genevieve has started teaching textbooks 7,  I think this will be a good choice for her this year, as she will be able to do it independent and she is wanting more independence I think.   It will actually give her a lot of review and time to make sure she is solid in some basic arithmetic, before moving on.  She is also doing some flashcards for review of basic concepts.  We will see how long she does it until she is bored.  She did complete 8 lessons this week.  

Her book, this week she did not do any work on her book as we were just getting in the swing of things with other things, but this morning (Saturday), I have finally loaded her Wacom tablet onto her computer along with the drawing program that came with it, she has been busily watching tutorials and playing around with it for hours, she loves it, and is excited to get started again on her book.  I think she was feeling a little overwhelmed with the magnitude of the project, and so I think she had kinda stepped away, but this has brought her passion back.  I will let her play around still next week while I am gone, and then we can work on getting a time line going for her and some goals.

extra curricular Genevieve 

Well it looks like the rec cheer team that she was supposed to coach did not have enough people sign up, but they are running a free drop in on Tuesday to try and get some more people so I guess we will see.

so since she was going to be without coaching I thought about adding something else for her, because we are not doing CSOPA this year.  Someone had posted about a homeschool  choir this year and I had enquired, it ended up the person did not have enough time to do it this year, so instead I looked for another one and found the Chilliwack youth orchestra.  Perfect!  Checked it over with her voice teacher and she said yes, good for her.  So I signed her up Tuesday night, Wednesday morning I got a message saying that if I was interested the other woman is not doing a choir, but she would be willing to do a group lesson.  The teacher is a voice teacher at Trinity western and I thought wow, this might be a good opportunity for her to have some time with other homeschoolers, who love the same thing she does, but also have the experience of another teacher and she mentioned she would do some ear training, which I think Genevieve could use.  So I signed her up for that, as it was really a good price both of them were.  We love Marlene and will stick with her as her main vocal coach, but its always nice to sing with others.

Music 

Genevieve is super excited as she has an opportunity to play in front of the leutenant governor.  It will be a Canadian composers concert, and Genevieve will play her own composition, she will be the only one who has written both piano and singing as well.  There are a few others who have composed piano pieces.  The majority of the players will be playing others pieces.  She was very excited about this and has a piece in the works that she is excited about playing.

Genevieve's note to herself for this week, this is not a game lol

Looking ahead

Once Genevieve has completed her book, I think we will have some time on our hands, I know we will want to focus on some science concepts, but I think we will have more time then science can take up.  I am thinking of adding this unit onto the end of our year, I think it could be used for Language Arts as other reviewers have said it has a large language arts component.  I think it would interest her and help her in her studies as well.

http://bfbooks.com/History-of-Classical-Music-Jumbo-Pack

I am wondering if the school has any of the books already, I know we have used some of the CD's in the past and Genevieve has enjoyed them.