January! Happy New Year!

I can hardly believe it has been over a month since I posted last.  I missed posting a bunch "book work" activities that we did before Jeff got home early December.  And I can not remember what we did.

The month Jeff was home was filled with lots of activities and hands on learning.  We sure had fun taking a break.  

Week 1 - we painted Genevieve's bedroom!   This was a lot of work and Genevieve helped out a lot, painting and prepping.  She had stripes before that required sanding and primer to cover (don't let me do stripes again). 

Friday nathan woke up not feeling well, he could not see properly and was seeing grey fuzz like TV static all day.  He complained of a headache as well.  Both nathan and Gigi were supposed to perform at a festival of trees in mission that night.  Nathan was pretty adamant he did not want to perform, we agreed but said he had to come with us, we wanted to see Gigi.  He did so good coming with us and not complaining at all.  He had a little trouble walking as he really could not see well.  I was maybe a little skeptical that he really was not able to play, as I though maybe he just didn't want to.  Saturday morning was their piano recital and nathan woke up saying he felt great and was ready to perform.  Did I ever feel a bad that I doubted a little that he was that unwell.  Nathan and Genevieve performed beautifully, it was such a joy to watch them.  It was great to see nathan confident in his piece.  Genevieve was so amazing in her first vocal performance.  She was pretty nervous beforehand but it was so hard to tell as she was performing.  

 

Saturday night they went to a performance by the chilliwack symphony, Christmas show, I thought I bought tickets to the nutcracker, oops.  They liked it though. 

Sunday morning we headed out to Vancouver to enjoy the city for a few days.   First we went to see the Vancouver canucks skills competition.  We found a hotel (the wall centre), and by chance it happened to be directly across from the church that the VSO was performing at!  We relaxed in the afternoon, and then went out for dinner.  We were going to go to a Korean BBQ, but the wait was too long and we rested too long, so we headed to Earls.  When we got to Earls poor Nathan had a sensory overload, it was noisy and hot in there, he just could not do it.  Since it was late and we had few options, jeff took Nathan to tim Hortons, while Gigi and I stayed at Earls since she needed something gluten free.  I sipped on a belini, as jeff drank a coffee.  The VSO Christmas concert was wonderful, but it started at 7, the church pews, were like torcher devices for those with EDS.  Most of us made it though besides Genevieve who fell asleep.  Thankfully Jeff did not have to carry her far. 

The next day, we decided we should take things a little more easy, to try and keep Nathan a little more level.  We attempted to go to science world but it was closed Monday, so off to the planetarium we went.  We always enjoy the movies there, but the displays seem outdated, and really not much to see.  After we went and got some groceries, as Nathan and Genevieve prefer not to eat out every meal, and it is more difficult with Genevieves dietary needs.  We then had a relaxing day of hanging out at the pool, and an early bedtime.

Tuesday, we went to science world, and had a great time, light was the feature exhibit. We spent about 5 hrs at science world, and then headed out to capilano.  Poor Nathan was crying before hand he did not want to go, he is terrified of heights etc.  Nathan made it across twice!  We were there early enough to see everything in the daylight and then the whole park light up with lights, how beautiful it was.  

Wednesday was our last day, we woke up early and went skating at robson outdoor arena.  We had a great time, until a school arrived, and we decided that it was time to leave.  We then got ready to see the musical Mary Poppins.  I think the musical was definitely the highlight of the trip!  All of us enjoyed it immensely.

After Christmas we spent a few days up at manning park, snowshoeing, skating, and downhill skiing.

It was a very busy month with Jeff home, and although we did not do any bookwork, we definitely did some learning when he was home.

Square dancing and Nate the great goalie

This morning we read the next chapter in little house in the big woods.  We then looked up learn how to square dance videos on YouTube and spent the rest of the morning square dancing.  Nathan was not really wanting to dance with his sister, but you can tell he enjoyed it by the smile on his face. 

This was pretty fun to call out moves and Nate and Gigi did it, too bad daddy wasn't here and we could have had two couples. 

Next up hockey

Nathan tried out being goalie today, he has been wanting to for a long time.  We had to mcguiver the equipment to make it work for him a little.  The catcher I had to tape into him so it would not fall off as he didn't have the finger strength to hold the catcher on.  It also weighed a lot so taping it to his jersey helped redistribute the weight a little.  I am sure he played with two dislocated shoulders though as the weight must have put them out right away.   Another problem I hadn't for seen was that nathan can not stand in one spot for long.  He ended up having to sit down on the ice when the play wasn't in his end.  He made some pretty great saves and let in a few goals too.  He knew before trying it out that he would not be the greatest goalie as that requires some practice.  He wants to go back at it and try goalie again next week so that's great.  Even though he has a lot of pain tonight and a pretty good headache to go with it.  Physio is tomorow so hopefully she can put him back together again.  

Friday November 21

Friday DIY fun!

Genevieve was invited to stay at DIY today and she had a great time.  Both Nate and Gigi enjoyed the guest speaker and learned a few things about owls they did not know before.  

After DIY we had lunch and then went on a play date.  

Saturday nathan had a soccer game, thankfully my dad came down to take nathan to the game as Gigi had soccer at the same time.  I think grandpa is enjoying taking nathan to his games as they really are getting quite fun to watch. It was another great game and the chilliwack tornados remain undefeated. 

When I dropped off Gigi at cheer the head coach wanted to talk to me, I was five minutes late dropping Gigi off, thought I might be in trouble.   But know she wanted to talk to me about how Genevieve was doing.  She said that they had wanted to put her on the level 2 youth team this year, but since she did not have her back handspring and they really needed the extra girls for the mini team, she decided to keep her on the mini team.  She asked me if she could now put Genevieve on the level 1 youth team right now though as the team was struggling a little and could really use Genevieve's strength's on the team.   She said Genevieve is a very quick to pick up new routines and she though she would be able to learn the routine quickly.  The team has been working together since September and has their routine already, so poor Gigi will have to really learn her part quickly.  She also told me that Genevieve would most definitely be on the youth level 2 team next year.  I am very happy for Genevieve to make the level 2 team.  Her tumbling skills are not what the other girls on the level 2 team have but all of her other skills are right up there.  The coach also believes Gigi is so close to achieving the tumbling skills required for a level 2 team.  You can only imagine the level of joy this brought to Genevieve!   It means she will be at cheer now, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and thankfully Saturday, both teams practice at the same time so no extra time for mommy, she will just be jumping back and forth.  

I can really get used to waking up to my bathroom being cleaned

They are still loving the checklist, I woke up to Nathan cleaning my bathroom, and when I went downstairs, Genevieve had already started a load of laundry.

We have been trying to look at our schedules at dinner time to discuss what we are doing the next day, and the kids are looking at them first thing in the morning and liking to get what they need to get done in the morning .

I started this morning by reading our chapter in little house in the big woods together, so after we finished reading and answering the discussion questions we could split up and one do math and the other do MBTP.  It was such a wonderful plan, but as I was getting Nathan set up, gigi was calling saying she needed help, I said just move on to the next question, but she then said, no mom the computer is not working.  Did I mention that we bought Genevieve a used computer for her birthday?  Well we ended up taking that computer back twice, getting a new one and finally taking that one back.  We ended up buying a brand new one from Costco, and now this 30 day old computer had a blue screen.  So I googled it and what shows up but blue screen of death, so what do I do but panic a little thinking that the computer was seriously dead!  Anyway after trying several things myself to fix the problem, I located my Costco bill and called the concierage, 5 minutes later my computer was fixed.  But I did not call them until after we were done homeschooling.  So no math was completed today.

thankfully not the blue screen of death

We were busy enough with what we did get accomplished.  I am always amazed at how long it takes us to do the MBTP stuff.  It seems like we never have enough time in the day.  We filled in the then and now pages, where we contrast how life is different in the book from how it is now.  They worked at a page hat they had to order the steps in making maple sugar that were told in the book.

Next they worked on a vocabulary minibook.  We didn't even do all of the pages in the book yet, and it took us forever, I even printed for Nathan.  For each word they had to locate it in the book, a page number was given to find it on.  Next they had to record the definition, write a sentence of their own and then draw a picture.  There were 9 cards.

this was a lot of work, but Nathan even had a couple of words he did not know, I think he was excited about that

whetstone was one of the words Nathan did not know, sumac was the other

Next up was science and the science of Dirt and Plants.  We discussed herbaceous and woody plants, on the way out the door to hockey we stopped to look in our garden to see if we could see what plants were woody or herbaceous.  They completed a worksheet on what plants need to survive.  

Hockey- 2 hrs, Gigi had a fantastic game, and stopped many shots from going in, also had many people come up and say wow is that your girl :)

cheer - 1.5 hrs

Tuesday

Schedule is definitely working out nicely, I woke up to the washing machine going, as Nathan had brought down laundry and put in a load of laundry before I even woke up! 

Tuesday morning we started school about 9:30 as Nathan and Genevieve were excited to get their chores done, and I also made a big breakfast.   We started off reading chapter 11 in story of the world.  This chapter was about ancient Africa, and it discussed how the Sahara dessert was not always a desert and how archeologists know this.  We also read a couple of stories of anansi the spider.  As we were reading the beginning of the chapter, it was recapping where all the ancient civilizations were that we have read about so far.  We looked on our maps in the book, as well as our dry erase poster map.  After we were finished reading we did the discussion questions, and then we got out the dry erase world maps and I circled where the different continents were and we labeled the different continents.  You just asked Gigi about this on Monday Rebecca, and it was funny that continents were brought up in the book today, so I though it was a good idea to discuss continents.

hmm practicing flexibility at the same time as learning the continents

Nathans flexible enough

We then did moving beyond the page and math, I had them switch off.  This worked out quite well.  We managed to get most of what I wanted accomplished this morning and then we had a quick lunch and off to piano and voice lessons.

For moving beyond the page, they worked on some bear research, they had to do an internet search and find out information on bears.  They also wrote a 5 senses poem on their least favourite day of the week.  I agree Rebecca these poems are kinda neat, the kids found them so easy to write.

genevieves bear research

nathans bear research

genevieves poem, hmm wasn't I saying to you that gigis spelling was getting better...  I think she forgot here

looks like Nathan was trying to write as few words as possible

parts of a plant genevieve

parts of a plant Nathan

Math quiz 1 nathan

new schedules!

I was inspired by a kickstarter for planners to try and make us up some weekly planners.  At first I thought I could use the free one offered on the kickstarter, but I am sooo picky and I want it exactly how I want it.  So I made I myself instead.  The day is listed out in 1/2 hour blocks of time, and I have the timeslots colour coded for what we are doing at the time, just like our weekly schedule I did in September, I even tried to use the same colours.  I printed it out on legal sized paper so it is really big, so easier to write in.  The bottom part of the page, has a list of daily personal things for the kids to checklist off that they are required to do everyday that they can sometimes forget.  We also added a spot for chores.  We sat down Sunday evening and discussed the calendar, and that every Sunday we would sit down and pick our chores for the following week.  They are allowed to pick any two chores they like.  Nathan does not like change of course so this was initially hard for him to do, I showed the schedule I was making for him on Friday, again on Saturday, and asked him if he wanted to add or change anything on Sunday, so he was a little prepared and I did not just spring it on him.  We also discussed on Sunday what we were doing the next day and what was expected of them.

Monday morning rolled along and they were both excited to check off their checklist!  We drove jeff to the airport in the morning and then had to head right back home to meet up with Rebecca for our semester meeting.   One of Genevieves chore on Monday was to make lunch, so she made us all grilled cheese sandwiches including making one for Rebecca.  Oh that reminds me Rebecca in one of those captain books gigi read about the Earl of sandwich.  She thought that it was pretty funny that sandwich was actually someones name!  Nathan sharpened pencils, and Nathan's perfectionist personality it took him almost 2 hrs to sharpen the pencils.  Both Nathan and Genevieve managed to get their school work assigned to them completed on Monday.  I had shown them they had work in a folder to do, while we had teacher meeting, they had to work independently.

After meeting with Rebecca, I was ready to just have a relaxing afternoon, and Nathan was looking at his schedule and says to me, mom what time is it?  I said 1:30, he says well doesn't that mean we have to be getting ready for horse?  How could I forget we had horse riding on Monday?  And just as I was yelling at the kids to hurry up and get in the car, my parents show up.   So then I was trying to hurry and rush everyone out the door and get to horse about 20 minutes late....ooops.  I was glad my parents came, Nathan was a little more tired today during horse and did not get to show my parents his loping skills, but Nathan I could tell was happy that they saw him on his horse.

Daddy's home week, I know we did something!

Last week I know we did more school, we did do school everyday, but it was still lighter, than pre Nathan episode.  We did work on math everyday, and I think we worked on essay writing everyday.

We ended up with a completed essay from both Nathan and Genevieve! 

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4 the end

nathans essay
 

Friday we worked on Canadian natives.  I got Genevieve and Nathan to work on a page of the pacific north west natives, and more specifically do a few pages for the Sto:lo people.  We discussed that they share many of the same cultures and traditions of the pacific north west but that they are distinct.  I asked Nathan and Genevieve to write a little on how the sto:lo are distinct from other cultures of the pacific north west.