Summer 2016

Wow how is it back to school time already?  I can't believe how fast the summer went by.  We had quite a few adventures this summer, but maybe not as active as we usually are, as I am still waiting to see a GI dr.  

Canim Lake

One of the first trips this year was up to 100 mile house, we have been going up every year for the last 5 or 6 years.  We stay at a cabin with friends on canim lake.  It is always peaceful, except when we are tubing.

Genevieve, Nathan, Ginger, Maclean, Diesel, on our last day,
our typical picture on the dog the day we leave

their most favourite part of canim, having Mr Strahl tow them in the tube!

Genevieve always performing cheer

Manning park

After we arrived home, since I had most things ready, I decided that we would head up to manning park with my parents and Jeff, we stayed at manning for almost a week, and had a great time with grandparents.  Kids did a little kayaking, and some swimming, and fishing.

lantern festival, the kids built lanters to light and float onto the lake

this picture is hard to see, but it is sooooo pretty

Chilliwack Lake

Next up was camping in the first week of august with a friend from genevieves cheer (they have been on the same team for the last 5 years).  Kids had lots of fun playing and we managed to go on a hike!  It was up to Radium lake, it was a long hike but interesting, we had not attempted this hike before.

lots of interesting bridges on this hike

swinging suspension bridge

this tree scared us when we saw it

Cheer and more cheer

Cheer occupied 2 whole weeks of august.  Genevieve had cheer camp for 2 weeks 6 hours a day.  She loved it, of course!  Over the summer we have found a new tumbling coach for genevieve at a new gym that has opened up in chilliwack.  Genevieve has had about 5 private lessons with her and it has helped her immensely, we plan to carry on with these once a week.  I am happy that they are local, and I am not driving to abbotsford another day.

Cheer schedule for this year, is going to be a little easier on me!  Only 2 days a week, she is only going to be on 2 teams, Youth 1 and Youth 2.  Tuesdays 4-8 and thursdays 5-8.  And we are going to carpool with another friend who is on the same two teams!  that means only driving 1 day a week!  

Rocky Mountain adventure

August 19th Jeff has been layed off work for about 6 weeks, Yeah!!!  It is a perfect time, and he has an idea of when he is going back and has been offered a position, so much less stress knowing he is going back to work, we can enjoy the time off that he has!  We decided to do some renovations on the house, as jeff needs to keep busy.  (I normally like doing stuff like this, dont like spending money though, but I am feeling pretty tired because of the stupid crohns)  We decided to also take a weeklong vacation when genevieve was done cheer.  We went up to Jasper, and then down the icefield parkway, and then into radium.  We then spent a few days a fort steele.  I think this one week was one of my most favorite family trips we have taken!  Kids got to study a lot of canadian history.  I read the broken paddle while we were driving, kids really liked this book, Genevieve would like to read the continuation of this book.  Kids loved fort steele!  They did not want to leave.

She was swimming in the thompson river and this
salmon literally jumped into her arms!

Mt robson behind

Hike in jasper, amazing view

playing dutch blitz while it was raining, we love this game!  

Ginger in a stair donw with a mt sheep, until it put his head down
 ready to charge, we quickly picked up ginger

Rutting!

Continental divide

half in alberta, half in BC, and yes she wears dresses camping

Genevieve's hand surgery

Genevieve has had a trigger finger in her index finger on her right hand since she was born, we left it as it was not causing too many problems.  But this past year it had got stuck closed for a few weeks.  It has also been getting stuck on her while doing cheer, so she has been doing backhandsprings with a stuck closed awkward fist.  We decided that it would be better for her to have surgery.  Her surgeon was a Dr Bristol and he was amazing.  He talked to Genevieve and never once talked down to her, he explained the surgery and any risks.  Genevieve decided that she would like to have the surgery with a local anesthetic as it has fewer risks involved.  This is the girl who has previously not let any dr near her!  She was super nervous leading up to her surgery, but she did not put up any fuss and was determined to be able to do it!  I went in with her and she listened to a movie most of the time, she held her hand perfectly still and did not move the whole time!  I was unsure if it really was Genevieve, I could see she was scared, but she did not cry or complain, or move!  Her surgery was yesterday and she is doing pretty good today thursday.  It was a little hard to do some schoolwork as it is her right hand.  She has even gone to cheer practice, she is not able to stunt or tumble for two weeks, but she said she wanted to go because it was important to be there with her team, and at least learn any changes that they were doing.  I love her dedication.

some extra photos from this summer....

a shirt Nathan recieved from EDS canada for his fundraising efforts

tower of keva planks

my  cousins wedding

just missing jeff

Genevieves birthday at the waterslides

Yes of course they are doing cheer at the waterslides

DAY 1 2016 Thursday September 8th

We will count today as our official get back to school day, as today was the day we sat down and completed school work.

The Giver

We started with language arts and the Giver, Nathan and Genevieve are both completing this novel study.  I started by reading the first two chapters as we only have 1 book.  We always answer the comprehension questions orally, as I find it gives us a really good opportunity to have more in-depth conversations about the book.

the first assignment was a vocabulary game,  they had to roll a dice
 to determine what part they had to answer, parts of speech, definition,
 use in sentence, synonym/antonym

here they are playing the game, Nathan saw me about to take the picture and tried to escape,
 the only picture I got of them today!

they had to decide what they would like to be if  they lived in the society in the giver,
 Nathan choose to be a nurturer, I know he loves younger kids,
but this surprised me a little.  He had to handwrite today
as his computer is in the shop for repairs.

Here is Genevieves answer to the same question, because she has just had hand surgery she video taped her responses, she did attempt to write with her left hand, doing not a bad job of it!  

So I know moving beyond the page I think suggests maybe 1 - 1 1/2 hours to complete LA, it always takes us 2 hours to complete if we do all the assignments... so we did LA from 9-11:10

Recess

Genevieve went upstairs and did her trampoline exercise on the mini re-bounder for 20 minutes, I tried to encourage Nathan to do something active like go shoot some hockey pucks but that did not happen, he rested during his recess.

Social studies (moving beyond the page, ancient Egypt)

We had to read quite a few chapters from our usborne book

this was our assignment

Nathan thought this brainstorming activity was stupid, and just a way to waste time.  I explained to him that this activity has a purpose and that it prepares him to be an independent learning, it prepares him to look at things differently before he goes and studies.  So when he is on his own learning something and he decides he wants to learn about something he can first think about what he knows and then figure out what he does not yet know, in most cases you will be surprised about how much you already know and that can help in your research, you can narrow down what you then need to focus on.  I could tell he went oh, that makes sense now.  He hates doing busy work, without purpose, it is one of the reasons I like moving beyond the page though is because of all the activities like this one where you are actually building skills for learning and not just regurgitating, information.  They can use these skills for future learning.

this is Nathan's, you have to look past his printing...
It must be so hard for him to do this...

Genevieve completed this, but I can not find it, I thought she did a video, but maybe she did write with her left hand for this one...  she did it anyway

time 11:30-12:30

Math time spent 12:30-1:30

Math I have decided that we will focus on basic math fact memorization for the first few weeks.  So we did a few things today to help with this.  Nathan was unhappy to be studing math facts and said it was below his level, but I did remind him that he does not know them, and it will help him if he just memorizes them.  He knows them by skip counting, but I would like him to be faster.

We started with flash cards

moved on to math wrap-up rap

we ended with snap it up multiplication, I know Nathan learned his
 basic addition facts with this game, so it will prob help him
 learn his multiplication facts

Extra curricular

Papers route 1 hour, Nathan did the paper route by himself because we forgot it was Thursday

Genevieve cheer practice 3 hours 

Genevieve went to bed reading from her science book to get ahead for tomorrow.

Summer 2016

Wow how is it back to school time already?  I can't believe how fast the summer went by.  We had quite a few adventures this summer, but maybe not as active as we usually are, as I am still waiting to see a GI dr.  

Canim Lake

One of the first trips this year was up to 100 mile house, we have been going up every year for the last 5 or 6 years.  We stay at a cabin with friends on canim lake.  It is always peaceful, except when we are tubing.

Genevieve, Nathan, Ginger, Maclean, Diesel, on our last day,
our typical picture on the dog the day we leave

their most favourite part of canim, having Mr Strahl tow them in the tube!

Genevieve always performing cheer

Manning park

After we arrived home, since I had most things ready, I decided that we would head up to manning park with my parents and Jeff, we stayed at manning for almost a week, and had a great time with grandparents.  Kids did a little kayaking, and some swimming, and fishing.

lantern festival, the kids built lanters to light and float onto the lake

this picture is hard to see, but it is sooooo pretty

Chilliwack Lake

Next up was camping in the first week of august with a friend from genevieves cheer (they have been on the same team for the last 5 years).  Kids had lots of fun playing and we managed to go on a hike!  It was up to Radium lake, it was a long hike but interesting, we had not attempted this hike before.

lots of interesting bridges on this hike

swinging suspension bridge

this tree scared us when we saw it

Cheer and more cheer

Cheer occupied 2 whole weeks of august.  Genevieve had cheer camp for 2 weeks 6 hours a day.  She loved it, of course!  Over the summer we have found a new tumbling coach for genevieve at a new gym that has opened up in chilliwack.  Genevieve has had about 5 private lessons with her and it has helped her immensely, we plan to carry on with these once a week.  I am happy that they are local, and I am not driving to abbotsford another day.

Cheer schedule for this year, is going to be a little easier on me!  Only 2 days a week, she is only going to be on 2 teams, Youth 1 and Youth 2.  Tuesdays 4-8 and thursdays 5-8.  And we are going to carpool with another friend who is on the same two teams!  that means only driving 1 day a week!  

Rocky Mountain adventure

August 19th Jeff has been layed off work for about 6 weeks, Yeah!!!  It is a perfect time, and he has an idea of when he is going back and has been offered a position, so much less stress knowing he is going back to work, we can enjoy the time off that he has!  We decided to do some renovations on the house, as jeff needs to keep busy.  (I normally like doing stuff like this, dont like spending money though, but I am feeling pretty tired because of the stupid crohns)  We decided to also take a weeklong vacation when genevieve was done cheer.  We went up to Jasper, and then down the icefield parkway, and then into radium.  We then spent a few days a fort steele.  I think this one week was one of my most favorite family trips we have taken!  Kids got to study a lot of canadian history.  I read the broken paddle while we were driving, kids really liked this book, Genevieve would like to read the continuation of this book.  Kids loved fort steele!  They did not want to leave.

She was swimming in the thompson river and this
salmon literally jumped into her arms!

Mt robson behind

Hike in jasper, amazing view

playing dutch blitz while it was raining, we love this game!  

Ginger in a stair donw with a mt sheep, until it put his head down
 ready to charge, we quickly picked up ginger

Rutting!

Continental divide

half in alberta, half in BC, and yes she wears dresses camping

Genevieve's hand surgery

Genevieve has had a trigger finger in her index finger on her right hand since she was born, we left it as it was not causing too many problems.  But this past year it had got stuck closed for a few weeks.  It has also been getting stuck on her while doing cheer, so she has been doing backhandsprings with a stuck closed awkward fist.  We decided that it would be better for her to have surgery.  Her surgeon was a Dr Bristol and he was amazing.  He talked to Genevieve and never once talked down to her, he explained the surgery and any risks.  Genevieve decided that she would like to have the surgery with a local anesthetic as it has fewer risks involved.  This is the girl who has previously not let any dr near her!  She was super nervous leading up to her surgery, but she did not put up any fuss and was determined to be able to do it!  I went in with her and she listened to a movie most of the time, she held her hand perfectly still and did not move the whole time!  I was unsure if it really was Genevieve, I could see she was scared, but she did not cry or complain, or move!  Her surgery was yesterday and she is doing pretty good today thursday.  It was a little hard to do some schoolwork as it is her right hand.  She has even gone to cheer practice, she is not able to stunt or tumble for two weeks, but she said she wanted to go because it was important to be there with her team, and at least learn any changes that they were doing.  I love her dedication.

some extra photos from this summer....

a shirt Nathan recieved from EDS canada for his fundraising efforts

tower of keva planks

my  cousins wedding

just missing jeff

Genevieves birthday at the waterslides

Yes of course they are doing cheer at the waterslides