Another great day

I made up a detailed schedule again for today and wow what a difference does it make for these two.  I think they are liking the feeling of being more in charge of their schooling.  It is much more work for myself as I am inputting all of the required assignments, labeling their assignments, putting them in a folder, printing the worksheets ahead of time.  Usually I just open the book and go.  But the benifits that has happened is they are more independent as they are working.  I have been cleaning, or working 1:1 with them. Funny thing today I had written down that I was going to read one of the stories, but they both wanted to read the story themselves!  Say what!!!   This is a great unit to encourage independence as the stories are shorter, and this unit is a shorter unit.  Although with all activities we have it will add at least an extra week.   Next year the manual is written to the kids instead of to the parent, I was concerned if nathan and Genevieve would be able to be self led enough to do it themselves.  

So today the read two more stories.  They completed the same sheet as yesterday about elements of culture they noticed in the story. 

Next worksheet was an animal character worksheet where they had to pick an animal and describe what characteristics it had that made it seem human

A comparison was done between eagle boy and salmon boy to identify similarities and differences.   

After language arts we moved on to science.  Genevieve complained here that she hates science.  Umm okay, I think she hates it because nathan loves it, as every time we do science she seems engaged.  

First up we observed our swamp ecology, we were really surprised to see all the life in there as yesterday we didn't see anything.  

Next up we discussed symbiotic relationships.  We watched a video on leaf cutter aunts and bacteria. 

Their next assignment was to research 1 of 5 choices of different symbiotic relationships and either write a paragraph explaining or do a demonstration.  Nathan wrote a paragraph while Gigi made a fun facts with Genevieve video.

 

 

 

Hi my name is Nathan and I’m going to talk about the relationship between clownfish and sea anenomie.  They have a symbiotic relationship.   Clown fish hide in sea anenomie because it’s poisonous to most things but not clown fish.  You want to know how sea anenomie feeds off clown fish, it eats their poo. Clown fish and sea anenomie are both biotic not abiotic. When the females died them male clown fish transform into female, how unknown.  Not only can clown fish hide in sea anenomie but other types of fish find homes in sea anenomie as well!

We then ran to do papers where Nathan's poor hip was really bothering him and he could not deliver the papers.  We managed to finish in time because of super speedy Genevieve she was amazingly fast and definately warmed up for cheer :).  Cheer was next

After conning home from cheer we had a parcel pick up of Nathan's piano chair!   Yeah!   I assembled while nathan played a chemistry game on the iPad.  He absolutely loved if and played it for 1 1/2 hours until I had to take the game away.  

This is an example of what he was doing, he had to figure out what elements and how many atoms of each were in the molecule listed.  He thought it was the most amazing game ever.  At the end he knew quite a few compounds!!!

Fished up sign of the beaver

We really enjoyed Sign Of The Beaver, but I was definately ready to move on, I think this book dragged on and on with all of our other commitments and medical issues the last few months.  I wish I had taken more pictures of what we have accomplished!   Writting levels have definately improved dragon speak has helped nathan immensely.  Genevieve wrote her own movie script on her own time.  I think it is about 10 pages long.  I also don't know how she knew how to write a script, as script writting is definately different but she did it.  Funny thing was the final project in mbtp was writing a script for a scene in the book.  Since Gigi has already written a script, I decided to let nathan do it.  He then had to scout out a good filming location and we filmed it.  Their cousin was here for the week and as she told the border guard going home (he thought it was unfortunate Katrina had to do school on spring break) that making a movie was fun.

Anyway hope to print out and have some of their stuff ready for their teachers at report time.

 

 

 

 

Last week of March

Already the end of March!   This past week, I think we all have enjoyed.

We have been working on multiplication, finishing mbtp, sign of the beaver, I just ordered the movie for our last lesson.  We also had a few extras we did this week as well

Monday we did some schoolwork in the morning that was self led.  Nathan read a bunch of books on genetics, watched a movie on genetics from brain pop as well.   Genevieve was working on her Germaine song, and multiplication.  We then went to rock climbing where both participated as Gigi's tumbling at twisters was later in the day.  I between twisters and rock climbing we went over to Tyler and Cody's house.  

Tuesday was a very exciting day for nathan.  I signed him up for a genomics workshop at ubc.  A fellow homeschooling mom of a gifted child interested in science organized the field trip.  It took a lot of convincing of ubc to let these students come to what they usually only offer to grade 9 students.  I think they were a little blown away with the level of understanding and participation of the kids.  The two instructors were grad students and amazing!   They really answered all of the kids questions and went off with them in their tangents or gently steered them back from quantum physics to genetics.  I stayed for the first two hours with nathan, Genevieve was with me.  I had originally planned on leaving nathan but all the other parents were staying.  I kinda felt horrible leaving nathan when everyone else had a parent there and he's the one with medical concerns!   I had talked to the teacher ahead of time though and given her a card with all of Nathan's info on it, she quickly turned it over and since she's in genetics, I'm sure she recognized eds diagnosis and offered me her number so I would feel more comfortable leaving nathan :).   So what they did, they had about an hour long discussion to start, nathan was thrilled, he has never been in an environment like this before, and he was loving the discussions.  I asked him why he wasn't answering questions as I knew he knew the answers.  He said he was enjoying hearing everyone else's responses, he knows what's in his head, he didn't need to hear it, but other people may answer differently, and spark conversation.  He was soooo into the lecture and discussion.  Next up we all spit in a cup.  We then headed over to the lab.  In the lab we learned what we were doing safety protocol etc.  Genevieve was very intent on the safety protocol, this seemed to be the most interesting to her :).  So with the spit they added SDS (super duper soap) to break down the lipid layer of the cells they collected from swishing saline in their mouths.  Next ethanol was added which made the DNA not happy as the charge was changed, so it formed strings.  We then sucked it up and put it in a vile.  

Gigi is saying can we go!!!!   You promised me something fun like an art gallery!

So Gigi and I left at this point it was break time.  I left nathan and he was totally okay with it!   He said just after I left he got a migraine and almost had to take a Tylenol I left in his backpack, but thankfully it was not severe and short lived.  After the break, they apparently did first year university work of isolating a typical human genome.  They also discussed the ethics of genetics, nathan really enjoyed this part as well.  From what I understand most of the kids thought the ethics were boring, but nathan thought this was one of the most interesting aspects.  They also discussed what it was like being a university student and what it's like at ubc.  Nathan said he would like to always live at ubc and wonders if he could be a student forever. During the lunch break, he went with another couple of families to view some art work.  He told me about it when I picked him up and he said it was okay I went right? And he gave me his reasonings for his decision, and why he thought it was an okay decision.  I love how he is able to make good choices on his own!  He can think for himself!   Apparently one of the boys and him had some great discussions at lunch and have asked for a play date, so they can discuss quantum physics some more.  So nathan survived a 6 1/2 hour day at ubc!!!   Who would have though he could do that a year ago?

Gigi and I took off to Granville island and had some lunch and some shopping, we also toured point grey and all the beautiful waterfront properties.  

We picked up a very excited nathan and decided to hit up the university bookstore, they were a little disappointed (nathan), but I think we missed the books for classes section, maybe he would have liked looking at that?  After our ubc fill for the day we went to the beach. 

We happened to end up at a dog park, yeah since we had ginger with us.  

Wednesday -  we didn't do much it was more of a recovery day from Tuesday for all of us.  

Thursday back to school, more mbtp, but I forget what we did, we went to physio, last appt for 4 weeks.   Poor nathan is not too happy to be missing out in physio, but we will continue to work everyday while at home.  He asked if he could do an extra day with jim, since he isn't doing physio.  I thought I would ask jim, since we had to miss a few days so I don't think we are at our budget yet. And what a difference riding has made for nathan.  

Friday- a few hours of school in the morning.  Nate and Gigi had to write a persuasive argument to Matt to try and convince Matt to either stay at the cabin or go with Attean.  What a difference dragon makes for nathan!   No arguments today about writing, I think he was kind of excited.  I did have to work with nathan to get him to expand on his ideas more, although I thought he had an excellent closing sentence.  Genevieve was finished hers so quick and I think some good writting.  She had some spelling mistakes but hugely improved spelling.   I did not make her correct spelling for this yet because I wanted to focus on content and the great content she presented.  

Saturday - Gigi had a play date with a friend from cheer in Abbotsford, I took them to the wave pool.  

Sunday- 1st interview!

We went to an open audition at a talent agency, it was definitely an interesting experience.  There were lots of people but we definately got their before the crush of people came.  Unfortunately right before they were taken in they decided to speed things up.  They took all the kids in their age group at once.  Once in the room they asked the kids to hold a pen and say "isn't this amazing".  Nathan and Gigi were pretty disappointed, they felt like there was no way they could be judged on such a little statement, they didn't get asked any questions or anything.  They said we waited 2 hours to say wow isn't it amazing :).  They still had fun though, and you can't tell me Genevieve didn't nail the over the top amazement of the pencil :)

After the audition we went to science world and had some fun there, and ended up for dinner at the old spaghetti factory.  

Gigi and I tried for 5 minutes to make these two pieces into a pyramid.  Nathan came over to the table after we had given up, looked at it for 3 seconds put it together, gave a chuckle and said isn't that neat.  

 

I think after seeing nathan do it it still took me a minute to get them together, and I though I was good at visual spatials.  

Genevieve is practicing her very first German song and is very excited about this.  I think we will be hearing this song for the next 3 months or so... I bought the level 3 vocal book from Royal conservatory of music, it has this song, and it comes with an accompany CD, which is wonderful for gigi to practice with.

 

Nathan vs his hip

Well nathan has had his first hip dislocation, he woke up last night in pain but could not call me because the pain was too bad.  He managed to get out if bed this morning and make it to my room.   The poor kid was crying.  He said I can't walk, my hips are so painful.  Between Gigi and I we managed to get him on the bed to try and get him comfortable.  We had tried my usual hip getting back in trick and it didn't work.   So up on the bed he went I got out the volts ten gel, for pain relief and try to get down any inflammation.  It took about 1/2 hour, but I finally got the hip back in with a very big pop.  It still really hurt but he could stand on his leg.   He then tried my trick and managed to get it firmly back in place.   Poor guy asked why it was so hard to talk and why he couldn't talk loud.   It's hard to talk when you are in that much pain.  

I know many would wonder why we didn't go to the ER.  Well I think they would look at me like I'm nuts, and not sure if they could have gotten it back in themselves.   I also could not carry nathan so I would have had to call an ambulance.  I think this way was a lot less traumatic for all of us.  I know I prefer to be at home when I am in pain.  

We got our friends to fill in for our paper route.  And we went to physio.  This helped nathan a lot, and she checked to make sure the hip was firmly back in place.  

Last day of hockey

Nathan slept in again today.  We had a late breakfast and we decided to work on math again today.  It went really well again today.  I decided to draw up some papers nathan can use to write his problems on.  He needs lots of space and he needs lines to separate place values.  I did one sheet for a double digit times a single digit, he can do 4 problems per page

And another sheet for double digit times double digit.   He can only do two problems per page, on this one.  

Nathan needs to have clean clear lines to be able to see.  It helps to have the lines drawn as his writing is so messy it is hard to see what and where he writes it unless he has separate boxes.  

After math we went to hockey.  Kids had a great hockey game.  

Genevieve had cheer next and nathan went to grandma and grandpas and they took him to play street hockey at the local school.  

We came home and nathan wanted to do more math.  I had bought a kumon multiplication book at costco for Gigi and she worked in it for half an hour.  

Forgot to mention, you know the other day when I said his headaches were getting better?  Well he had one that night before bed so he hasn't gone 1 day in the last two weeks without a headache.  Poor guy.  

And nathan went to bed with a dislocated shoulder because we could not get the shoulder to stay in, we kept on putting it in and out it would pop.  He woke up this morning and it was able to stay in.  

Back to reality

Daddy went back to work today, and the music festival is over.  I can breath a sigh of relief, not that you are at work Jeff :), but that we can roll on with our soon to be changing routine.  

While Jeff was home a lot of construction projects happened with nathan and daddy.  They got out the robotics kit nathan got at Christmas and spent hours assembling a car thingy.   Nathan then spent about 1/2 hour to see if he could improve on the initial design of the car.  He tried a few options and decided the original was better.   This was such a cool kit and you can build many different things with all the components.  They only used 2/3 of the motors for this build.  

They worked on a solar power car, but the parts were plastic and you had to pop them out an edsers nightmare.  I started helping nathan and I was about to throw out the thing it was so hard on my hands.  Jeff came to the rescue and nathan and I were relegated to the sorting of parts into bags.  This took forever so we didn't actually build anything else.  

Monday was science club, part two of our forensics day.  A lot of chemistry was covered, including stoichiometry.   All groups managed to solve the mystery to determine Betsy baker was the criminal.  After both nathan and Genevieve played a couple of games of chess.  

Tuesday - nathan and Genevieve participated in Rebecca's DIY class where they made parachutes, wind powered boats.   Nathan worked on a wind turbine and Genevieve worked on a paper mill.  After we went to piano and voice.  Gigi's teacher would like to enter her into a scholarship competition in May.  Genevieve is pretty excited, she is going to sing An die Laute, by Schubert, it is in German and a level 3 song in the royal conservatory of music.  Her teacher is also going to choose a Latin song for her to sing since she is learning Latin.  I think this will be difficult for Genevieve but I think she is up to the challenge.  She was bouncing as she came out to tell me about the German song she is going to sing.  

While Gigi was in piano nathan and I worked on multiplication.  We worked on double digit multiplication and understanding why we do it the way we do it.  If course I first tried the memorizing was add a zero when you multiply in the tens.  We had to break it down so he could understand the why's.   We eventually figured it out.  He did ask to listen to our skip counting cd on the way home (I forgot).  He is realizing how much easier it is for him that he knows how to figure it out, by skip counting.   He almost has the 7's solid, so we just have to work on the 8's and 9's.  So much easier when he is determined.  He learned the 7's in the way to the airport to pick up Jeff last week.  20 minutes and he knew them, and remembered them today.  How we picked the numbers to multiply today is that I had a 7 sided dice and a 36sided dice.  He rolled them to get his numbers.  

Genevieve, it has been bugging me that we have not really worked on multiplication facts yet.  She knows how to multiply but not by memory, like I think she needs.  Well today I gave her two six sided dice, and she solved the multiplication she rolled.  She worked on it for 45 minutes at piano and another 1 1/2 hours at home.  7 pages of neatly written problems, without 1 mistake.  She found the only ones she had to think about were the 7's.  I think I will get her some flash cards to work with next.  And slowly move up the dice.  Glad she liked it and was so determined.  

Oh and to top off our piano, nathan sat on the side of the red chair, well the chair flipped, tossed him to the ground and hit him in the head.  Of course the maintenance person saw nathan sprawled on the floor.  Called for help, they of course are being very careful with him, and worried about him as I am almost laughing out loud saying oh my goodness this is a very minor everyday injury for nathan.  We had to fill out an incident report ha ha.  Don't worry Jeff I was very nice and just went with the flow, even when they were inspecting nathan making sure he wasn't too injured lol

Good things this week, nathan seems back to normal without headaches, he had headaches everyday last week with several medium sized migraines.  The only thing I can think that was different is before the headaches started, he was at my parents and ate gluten for 2 days straight.  Don't worry mom not blaming just making note incase gluten is a trigger.   

Silver and gold, silver and gold...

Well Gigi had two more performances.  

Katy perry fireworks, she recieved a silver, she has struggled with this song and really did not like this song.  Her teacher picked it and well Gigi did not put all her effort into the song.  In the end she performed pretty good, she decided not to use a microphone as she does not like how her voice sounds in it.   We need to get one at home to practice with.  She also does not feel as comport able dining to music from speakers.  She would rather be accompanied by a piano.  But she put in a wonderful effort and I am proud of her putting everything into this song that she could.  The adjudicator did say that he thought when Gigi was as old as katy perry she would be doing exactly what katty perry is :)

She next sang my dog spot this morning, she sang beautifully and achieved a gold again. She was much more comfortable with this song. 

After Gigi's performance we delivered papers and then headed out to stave lake falls power house for a tour.  We spent about 3 hours there.  Lots of near things to do.