willing away migraines

Health

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

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

School work

Math

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

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

what Nathan is working on Quadradic equations,

this was his work today solving easy quadratic equations.

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

PE

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

Language Arts

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

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

Science 

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

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

Social studies

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

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

Schedule

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

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