February 27, 2006

Skiing lessons are going so well! Dd1 is really getting the hang of it. We stayed for almost 3 hours after her lesson on Thursday so she could have some extra practice. It is hard to believe for me that she is the same kid who was constantly falling on Tuesday! Although I think she pretty much still makes herself fall down to stop!!!!
Dd1 finished her CAT-3 tests last week. We worked on them every morning before skiing, and she was able to finish them up by Friday. Then on Friday we had support group meeting with our school board, so I took them and handed them to our Educational Assistant. In most grades you can mark them yourself, but for 3, 6, and 9, they are to be evaluated by your EA, or facillitator. I looked through the test though and she did fine. Those kinds of standardized tests are designed to have questions the kids know, and some they shouldn't know, so that they can gauge kids who are below average, average, or above. She got a few things wrong, which is good, it definately shows that she did the test by herself. I was actually worried about that for a few minutes, but there were things on there that she didn't know.
Today we had our medal ceremony, with the eldest dd earning a gold medal in math, gold in reading and a certificate, and dd2 earning a bronze for effort. She wasn't very interested in school work while Aunty and Uncle were here, and while they were gone, we were at skiing every day, so dd2 didn't get much school work done over the past two weeks. Then we stood up and sang O Canada!
We promptly moved back into Attentiveness with a focus on Music, Orchestra, and we will move into the other senses in a few days. We had a fun day. We listened to Beethoven's 5th symphony a few times, and played "Hide the Clock" - I hid a ticking timer, and then they had to find it, being very attentive of course! It was fun to talk about sound waves, and how they were hindered from reverberating when the clock was in a drawer, or covered by towels. All of the sound wave info of course dd1 learned at her field trip to the music museum a few weeks ago. Very fun! She also started her new vocabulary list, with our brand new Scholastic Children's Illustrated Dictionary!
By the end of the week I hope to have a few people on our timeline, and have dd1 choose a composer to write a short report on, or we may just do a paragraph or two about a few composers. She does have skiing on Wednesday as well, and a dentist appointment tomorrow!
We'll keep you posted!