Motivation Needed....

The day after daddy comes home, is always a hard day to do school.  I know thought that the best thing for us to do is stick to our schedule and continue on normally.  Of course it is hard to carry on normally.  We have little melt downs throughout the day, because both Nathan and Genevieve would prefer to be playing with daddy and not doing school work.

We enjoyed a nice breakfast together this morning, Gigi cooked some strawberry sauce for us to put on our waffles.  When we were about done breakfast I brought out story of the world, and the complaints started appearing from mostly Nathan.  I don't want to do this etc...   So it took us 1 hour to do story of the world instead of just 1/2 hr.  We ventured off to china in story of the world.  After we did our reading, we watched a video about cultivating rice.  Both Nathan and Genevieve found this interesting, as did Jeff :) 

Next up we brought out the poster board maps and labelled all the countries that they knew.  Nathan instead of writing showed daddy all the countries he knew as he said his hands hurt too much to write the names. 

Math...

Oh boy, one speeds on through and is now on chapter 26.

Nathan however I gave the timer too, and gave him 30 minutes to do 4 questions in beast.  Now I must say these questions should have taken him 20 minutes if he was trying the whole time.  Beast is not a speed through curriculum.  Nathan only completed 1 question, I had warned him that if he was not done, he would have to complete these problems when he got back from Piano....

MBTP  Final day of essays!  Gig and Nathan are done.  I would like to print them out and get them to edit them, but I am out of printer ink...  So I will see if I remember printer ink at Costco tomorrow.

Here is Nathan's finished essay...

                There is a circle of power between Poppy and Mr. Ocax, because they are different from each other.   Mr.  Ocax is at the top of the circle of power, because he scares them to take control of them.  He even killed ragweed, Poppy’s boyfriend.  Mr Ocax made all mice afraid of porcupines by telling them they were vicious, and porcupines would eat them, but he told them he would protect them from the vicious porcupines.  One of the differences between the mice and Mr Ocax, is one is good and one is bad, I leave it to you to decide which one is bad?  The mice have not been anywhere because Mr Ocax controls them with fear, it makes them different because one has more knowledge of world then the other.  The mice and Mr. Ocax are different because as I said before one is good and one is bad.                             

                Poppy found a gigantic fake owl and , Mr Ocax thought it was real, Poppy had discovered his fear,  and gained power.   The gigantic fake owl, scared Mr Ocax, because if he got in a fight with him, he would take his territory, and he would loose power.   Poppy gained power because Mr Ocax, had more knowledge than her before she took control of knowledge!  Poppy was not scared of Mr. Ocax because she felt powerful.  Poppy felt so much power that she killed mr. ocax and that’s how the mice took control tttthhhheee eeeennndddd!!!!!!!!!

    How will life change for the mice now?  Life changed for the mice in many ways.  The world that was once controlled by Mr. Ocax was now theirs’ to explore without the restrictions imposed on them by Mr.Ocax.  The mice were free to explore the world as they see fit.  They now had a place to call their own and dance in Dimwood forest.  Life changed for the mice for the worst and the good because now they didn’t have any one protecting them but it was better because their protector Mr.Ocax was eating them.

 

Both Nathan and Genevieve practiced piano.  Nathan  is ENJOYING playing piano!  I think he is liking that he has gotten to the point of perfecting his song!  He has worked on this song for 3 weeks and he can hear it now, when he plays it.  But it is not boring either, she has him practice other things at the same time as the song.  So he is working on a showpiece song and technique songs at the same time.  He practiced this morning and then he practiced again this evening after he came home from soccer practice.

Quick lunch for us, and then Nathan and Gigi were off to piano lessons. 

After lessons, we came home to Math homework.  Nathan finished fairly quickly with not quite as much grumbling.  Lots of playing with daddy came next, so much so that Nathan was late for soccer practice at 6-7:30.

After soccer was piano practicing and bedtime.  Gigi is more than half way done Jane Eyre and thinks it is the best book she has ever read.

 

 

 

Mondays... Daddys home

Mondays Jeff comes home are always a little off for us.  Nathan is usually highly emotional.  Today was that kind of day mostly, but overall it went pretty good.  We started the day a little later, by having a leisurely breakfast.  Genevieve practiced her piano first.  Then Nathan and Genevieve took Ginger for a run up and down the hill to get her tuckered out and well behaved for school time.  Nathan then practiced his piano, he did really well today, he practiced with Yoka for a solid 30 minutes.  He was really wanting to work hard today!  It was so awesome to see.

Nathan's posture is fantastic!  This is after 30 minutes!

Next we worked on MBTP and our essay. I worked with Gigi first while Nathan was doing piano.  She was really wanting to retell the story of Poppy, instead of doing what the assignment required.  I got her to read the instructions instead of me telling her what to do, and this helped.  She was able to formulate what she wanted to say.  I did help her a bit trying to get the idea of following the main idea of the paragraph, and also the topic sentence.

Genevieve's essay

           Mr. Ocax the owl is the king of the forest, because he is at the top of the food chain.  Mr. Ocax rules with fear.  Mr. Ocax can eat theme if they did not listen to him so he is the king of fear.  Mr. Ocax told a  lie to the mice that porcupine are vicious, and that if they did not ask his permission to go he could not protect them he did this to gain there trust. Mr. Ocax controls them with fear and lies!!!!!!!!!!

 

          Mr. Ocax's secret's are found out by poppy, and this is how she breaks the cycle of fear and power.  Poppy the mouse found a porcupine and found they were only bad to owls.  Poppy found an owl twice the size of Mr. Ocax and he is afraid the other owl will steal his territory, Poppy found out the owl is fake. Poppy is friends with a porcupine and gave Poppy a quill ,Poppy ties the quill to her self. Mr. Ocax came and Poppy ran into the the grass then Mr. Ocax started to talk to her then Poppy felt she had power so she came out of the grass Mr. Ocax came right out of the sky Mr. Ocax aimed right for Poppy she toke the quill and stabbed it in Mr. Ocax's foot Mr. Ocax is dead, the cycle of power is broken.

 

          Poppy life will now be happy that she is back safe at home.  Poppy got marred to a mouse named Rye.  Poppy and Rye have children.   Poppy has lots of fun with her new family.  Poppy is home.

 

 

 

Nathan then worked on his paragraph, while Genevieve continued working on her essay, and then she moved on to math when she was done.  Nathan while working on his paragraph was extremely tired, and his hands were aching.  We discussed that if he makes sure that he puts in 15 minutes 1 or 2 times a day of piano it would build up his hand strength and his hands would not hurt anymore.  He could see I think that the piano playing must be working out his hands finally :)  So Nathan was hard to motivate to get working on his essay.  So many things going on in his mind.  He finally managed to finish his paragraph. 

Here is Nathan's paragraph number 2, he has to finish number 3 tomorrow and then edit all three.

                Poppy found a gigantic fake owl and , Mr Ocax thought it was real, Poppy had discovered his fear,  and gained power.   The gigantic fake owl, scared Mr Ocax, because if he got in a fight with him, he would take his territory, and he would loose power.   Poppy gained power because Mr Ocax, had more knowledge than her before she took control of knowledge!  Poppy was not scared of Mr. Ocax because she felt powerful.  Poppy felt so much power that she killed mr. ocax and that’s how the mice took control tttthhhheee eeeennndddd!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Next up was math work.  Nathan worked on dreambox math today, he did 30 minutes of work.  Genevieve negotiated with me to read her novel, instead of doing math, and she would work on math while Nathan was at horse.  I readily agreed to this deal.

We had lunch and off we went to horse therapy for Nathan.  On the way to riding, Nathan was engaging me in such mind expanding conversations, I missed our exit, which made our trip 20 minutes longer.  The things Nathan thinks of while we are driving really blows my mind.  He is actually kind of opposite to me, while driving I like to listen to music and kind of vegetate out.  I am trying really hard to be a better listener to Nathan while we are driving.  I know that this is such a valuable time for us to talk, about all of the life changing things his brain thinks about.  If this kid does not make some kind of profound scientific breakthrough I think I will eat my shoe.  What I find difficult about this lets ask the most difficult questions while driving a car, is I don't have anyway of looking up questions Nathan asks.  And he does get frustrated when there isn't a clear answer on the topic he is asking about.  I sometimes have to say, I am sorry Nathan but that is the edge of science, scientist do not yet know the answer to these questions.  Just to give you an idea on what he talks about, on the way to pick up Jeff, we discussed, why children need more sleep than adults, I said it was because it requires more energy to grow.  He than asked well why do we not just stay short then and save all that energy.  We can grow strong by growing wider, but we would conserve a lot of energy.  This of course led to a discussion on evolution, and then that lead to a discussion on whether I thought there would be a time that humans did not exist, if we would have a mass extinction like the dinosaurs.  Which then brought up the idea that an asteroid caused this mass extinction, and that there is no proof.  And of course he wanted exact details on what would happen if an asteroid hit, how it would cause this catastrophe, and how big it was.  Then time travel was discussed, because that is the only way Nathan figures we can prove if dinosaurs live, of course we have to figure out how to travel faster than the speed of light, and would this then put us in an alternate universe than the one we are living though.  And next it lead to some kind of suit you wear, that is kind of like iron man, but we have no skin, and wear the iron all the time.  Nathan thinks we should have the technology to do this now.   Did I mention this conversation was only 10 minutes long.  My brain aches that I have had 3 twenty minute drives today with Nathan involved in his questions of the universe...

Here's Nathan at horse therapy, he did well in horse riding today, he choose to ride ziggy today, even though he has not ridden him in months

And then we had dinner, picked up Jeff and I am unwinding...

This is Gigi sneaking into my bedroom to share the book she is reading, jane eyre. She came to a sad part where Jane's friend dies when she is in school.  Genevieve is loving the book.  

Can you tell how sad this book is?

Apple Orchard

Today Gigi had an extra cheer practice to learn her choreography.  While Genevieve was at cheer, Nathan and I went to willow View Farms in Abbotsford.  We had never been there but we had a great time.  Nathan and I picked a bunch of apples.  Nathan noticed that the trees looked different at the bottom, he could see where they had been grafted.  So we talked about how they grow trees differently now to get more fruit in a smaller area of land.  And how one tree is grafted onto a different root system.  We tried out the apples as we picked them.  Poor Nathan overheated today at 11 am, it was only 20 degrees and he was in shorts and a t-shirt.  We stopped and got a apple cider slushy on the way out! 

Nathan pulling our cart along, as I am suggesting he stay in the shade because he is hot

Nathan loves his goats...

We picked up Gigi and headed home, Gigi was excited about her new cheer routine and showed us what it was and all the moves and lifts. 

Genevieve came into my room tonight at 9 pm, (I thought she was already asleep)  to tell me she was loving a book I had bought her.  She is reading Jane Eyre :)  and loving it.  It is a classics retold version by Usborne lexile count of 820.  I love how she loves reading.  I bought her a tonne of books off of eBay, and she has read them all I think except a couple.  I think she was holding off on this book because she thought it was too old for her, but she is really enjoying it.  She came in asking if this book was a series because she would be needing more of them.

Epic adventures.

Our first epic adventure with the DIY club was today.  A trip up lindeman. 

1st up was packing our packs this morning.  Why you ask am I doing it this morning, good question I think I work better under pressure.  Thankfully nathan and Genevieve know how to get their owns packs together and can help me pack lunch. 

Group hiking and ginger is not so great especially when I am walking ginger and nathan is way ahead.  Who knew ginger was so strong!   

When we got to the top we used two different water purification systems.   First up was tim's fancy charcoal filter and my chlorine and phosphorous.   I thought mine would taste terrible but it actually tasted pretty good.   

Next challenge was building a fort

We then had a challenge to build a fire.  Tim and I both had flints as well as another dad.  All the kids had turns trying to light.  What did Tim and I learn, it will take a really long time to light a fire with a flint.  I brought cotton balls soaked in Vaseline, and it was still hard. It was great practice, thankfully our flint is usually only our backup method. 

Next challenge cleaning up a trail.  

After our epic journey we went home and I had a nice hot bath, kids went outside to play.   Nathan came home I was still in the bath, he said mom we need dinner why do you always leave everything to the last minute, we are going to be late for the hockey game.   Right the hockey game, how could I forget.   Just what my hip needs three hours in a hard seat after a hike.  Oh what we do for our kids.  

So here we are at hockey.

And I am sitting here blogging at the game.   I'm not the most dedicated hockey fan :). 

Looking forward to my bed...

Paragraph 1 of three paragraph essay.

This morning we slept in after the late night last night.  I thought I would have very grumpy kids today but so far we are doing ok. 

This morning for fun I got out the dry erase maps I bought the other day and nathan and Genevieve labeled all the countries they knew.  I was surprised at how many they got!  They wanted to know more so I gave them a country and asked if they could figure out where it was, and then I have hints.  Nathan and Gigi both really liked this. 

Next up we did moving beyond the page.  We worked on our essay.   I had anticipated writting 3 paragraphs today, but I changed that to writing 1 as it was taking them a while to do this.  I thought having their ideas written down already would help but that did not.  

Genevieve's paragraph started out well, but then she really strayed off topic.  It was well written but not what we needed, so she will need to work on this another day. Our printer is out of ink (Jeff remind me to get some ink), so I didn't print hers out.  I let Gigi type hers today and I found she payed more attention to spelling this way.  She could see she spelt the word wrong and she was willing to look at the word and figure out how it should be spelt.  She did this by phonics, she is so good at phonics, but not as good at spelling, I understand it's a different concept, but I don't really understand why :)

Here is Nathan's first paragraph, of his essay.  I worked with him getting him to discuss what he wanted to convey to the reader.  He would read out what he had written and then he would verbally get his next sentence worked out before typing it. He would then re-read his sentence and see if he could improve on it.  

I just copied and pasted Nathan's work

                There is a circle of power between Poppy and Mr. Ocax, because they are different from each other.   Mr.  Ocax is at the top of the circle of power, because he scares them to take control of them.  He even killed ragweed, Poppy’s boyfriend.  Mr Ocax made all mice afraid of porcupines by telling  them they were vicious, and porcupines would eat them,  but he told them he would protect them from the vicious porcupines.  One of the differences between the mice and Mr Ocax, is one is good and one is bad, I leave it to you to decide which one is bad?  The mice have not been anywhere because Mr Ocax controls them with fear, it makes them different because one has more knowledge of world then the other.  The mice and Mr. Ocax are different because as I said before one is good and one is bad.

After mbtp, we moved on to math, both nathan and Gigi did dreambox again.  Gigi did some work in her book as well.  

At the moment they are dancing in the hallway to Christmas music.  Safely dancing in their own space, without endangering other classmates.  Lol.  I know there are way too many plo's on dancing :)

Genevieve dancing in my room, I think trying to get me in the music, playing let it snow.  Although my feet feel cold enough it may be getting ready to snow. 

Magic Flute

Today we started off the day with Math,  Gigi did not want to do her math book, she said she was bored of it.  She said it is too easy and review.  She is on lesson 21 and so far it has been review for her.  I am glad I ordered her grade 4 math instead of grade 3.  If she carries on at this pace she will be done 4th grade math in 5 months.  So I signed up for a trial of Dreambox, and she did that today for Math.  She enjoyed it so far, she is just doing the assessment.  I'm thinking this might be a good supplement for her in math, and maybe slow her down and deepen her knowledge a bit, instead of her just keeping on skipping ahead grade wise.  She is completing 2-3 lessons in 1/2 at the moment.  I had no idea she could do the math that fast, and all of her answers are always correct, a couple of times I thought aha I found a mistake, but I just could not read her numbers.  Since Gigi was doing dreambox, Nathan wanted to do dreambox as well.  He wanted to show Gigi how it works.  So they did their math work on dreambox for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. 

Next up we did some work Poppy and moving beyond the page.  Although we have finished the novel, we still have a few activities to do to complete our novel study.  We did some worksheets on suffixes.  And then we worked on starting a three paragraph essay.  We worked on the outline today.  They were given topics for each paragraph.  They then had to come up with the topic sentence (main idea), and 4 supporting details and a conclusion for each paragraph.  Tomorrow we will work on turning their outlines into paragraphs.  And if we have time some editing.

And that was all we had time for!  We needed to eat before we left for Physio singing, because I promised the kids I would take them swimming after.  So off to physio, where Nathan worked very hard, and Gigi expressed herself wonderfully to music.  She played a duet with her instructor which was wonderful.  Gigi picked a tune from the song someone like you and played it, and her teacher accompanied it, while gigi made up her own lyrics.  Her teacher was talking to her that a lot of songs are just a few chords and when you make changes like gigi did it becomes your own song instead of  Adele's song.  I should have recorded this one! 

So next we went swimming.  The pool was deserted, which was perfect.  I gave both Gigi and Nate some swimming lessons.  Gigi has almost perfected her stroke she is turning a little too much as she swims, but her stroke looks wonderful.  She swam about 15 lengths of the pool.  Nathan, was somewhat hesitant for instruction, but he did pretty good too!  His shoulders are doing so much better than they were a year ago, although they still dislocate all the time, he seems to have a better understanding of where his arm is in space.  He is able to move his arm without dislocating it swimming.  I only got Nathan to swim 2 lengths of the pool, as he had already worked out 1 hr at physio, and I did not want him to overdo it.  We ended up staying 2 1/2 hrs as Finn and Anika showed up at the pool, so gigi and nate played with them for a long time. 

So because we stayed so late swimming we did not get home until 4:30, I still had to cook dinner, get Genevieve bathed, as she needs to dechlorinate, as the chlorine really bothers her.  So we had to eat and all get ready to go by 7:10.  Of course I was in the bath tub at 6:30, and I really need a blowdryer, Jeff make sure I buy one when we go to Costco, going to an opera with soaking wet hair, was not the greatest, and I am sure the people driving by me while I was trying to dry my hair with the heat from the car vents thought I was a little crazy!   But we made it to the opera in time.  It was a fantastic experience, and sitting in front of us was our piano teacher!  That was pretty neat for the kids, she talked to them about the opera and about what they thought.  At intermission  they were serving tea in royal doulton tea cups, we all had a cup of tea.  As Nathan and I sat down to drink our tea, I watched my little Gigi daintily drink her tea in a very pretty dress, with shoes with heels on them.  As I had to sit down so I don't spill my tea in my very comfortable granny shoes.

We were so busy drinking our tea, we forgot to take a picture of us, and it was super long so after the kids were just plain exhausted.  It was not over until 10:30, the kids were sooooo tired!  They had wanted to come to the opera on Thursday because you get to meet the singers after the show, well Nate and Gigi were too tired.  Gigi was actually grumpy and said I just want to go home, can we please go home.  So we didn't get a chance to really discuss the opera too much after like we usually do as the kids were just too exhausted.

Can you please just open the door!  But look how handsome he looks, he does like dressing up.  

Do not take a picture of me, I want to go to bed. 

headache anyone?

So I woke up with a headache this morning, took out the garbage and climbed back into bed, until my headache subsided, which was about 9:30 am.  Before I woke up Nathan and Genevieve played a game of chess, and then they used the chess pieces in imaginative play and set up some kind of family.  But they are definitely on a chess kick.  We had breakfast and both Nathan and Genevieve worked on Math and piano practice.  Genevieve completed chapter 20 in Math.  She is already three weeks ahead of schedule in Math, but so far it has mostly been review, so I am sure she will slow down when she gets to more new materials.   Nathan finished another page in beast academy.  He was solving word problems gram weights.  He would have to determine how many weights were needed, or a question was like you have a 44 gram eliphinch, how many 8 gram weights and 4 gram weights would you need to get to 44 grams.  I have Nathan using a 100 chart to do this.  I wish I had a balance scale, and a bunch of different size weights.  I think Nathan would love it then. We then had to head out to hockey.

Genevieve is sure a different player on the ice this year, she has more determination, and is excited to get out there.  Nathan's always played with that intensity it seems.  Both sets of grandparents came out to see Nate and Gigi play today. 

After hockey today I told Nathan that it was important he have a shower.  All of a sudden he is sweating like crazy while playing sports.  He really did not want a shower as we only had 30 minutes before we had to leave to take Gigi to cheer.  I finally convinced him by telling him if he did not he was going to get jock itch.  I explained that Jock itch is a yeast infection in the jockstrap area.  I explained the peeling, the redness, pain and itchiness that come with it.  He promptly went into the shower when we got home and wanted more information on how exactly to make sure he did not get jock itch.  Hopefully this will work and I will not have a stinky boy ;)

We then raced off and took Genevieve to cheer for her 1.5 hr class.  I went to the teachers learning store and found some great poster board size dry erase world maps.  They are outline maps and basic and clear.  Kids were excited to see them, hopefully they will learn more world geography this year.

So tonight has ended with Nathan in tears and a pretty bad migraine.  His headache is not the my head may implode, and he turns purple magnitude headache, but it is pretty significant.  He asked for me to turn off his light for him, Nathan always goes to bed with the light on, so you know its bad when...  He also was begging me to do something to get rid of his headache, unfortunately there is nothing I can do to get rid of his headaches but time.

He did have some change in his routine today that he did not like.  I got him to change in the hockey change rooms instead of the front entrance.  We usually just put on the skates and the last few pieces of equipment in the front of the rink, but last week we were kinda in the way.  Well Nathan really did not want to go to the change rooms.  It ended up he was okay with using the changerooms, but he gets so nervous.  Not sure if this anxiety played a role in Nathan's headache tonight.  Dr Pleydell Pearce was thinking his headaches are from sensory processing issues that Nathan has, not sure how change fits in there but Nathan hates change and always has :)

Hopefully tomorrow will be headache free, we are off to see an opra tomorrow night "the Magic Flute"  This will be our first opera, and Nathan's horse riding instructor will be singing in the chorus.