Cheerleading and Judo

At the beginning of the year, Ciara was very excited to try-out for the cheerleading squad at ASB.  She needed no encouragement whatsoever.  Her coach has told me that she really appreciates Ciara on the team because she works hard and is always enthusiastic.  Ciara even enjoys performing in front of large groups.  Cheerleading has definitely helped her gain confidence.

Ciara has also continued with her judo and participated in her first competitive tournament in November, 2015.  Recently (on March 5th, 2016) she received her orange belt. We are so glad that Ciara is taking the initiative to learn new skills and participate in group activities.

Ciara performing at the middle-school assembly in October, 2015.  It's hard to see, but she starts in the middle, she is the one being lifted up,  and then she moves to the left side.

Ciara performing at the Winter Bazaar

Ciara receiving her orange belt

Judo

Nathan had to make a website about him doing Judo for his technology class, so I thought that I would share a bit of the footage we took for the website.  Nathan and Ciara both go to JudoTao a judo club in Can Vidalet, just about a 10 minute drive from our place.  They both train Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, Ciara at 6:30pm until 7:30pm and then Nathan from 7:30pm to 8:30pm.  It ends up that either Bob and I have to spend a large portion of the evening shuffling the two of them back and forth from Judo, but we are more than willing to do it.  I'm just happy that they both enjoy it and really want to progress.  I think that practicing Judo has also increased their confidence.  I hope that it keeps up :)

Nathan putting Rylan in a hold

Ciara's Second Day of School

All 4 kids headed out the door this morning for school and I wouldn't see them again until 4:05pm.  So now I was faced with 7 hours of unscheduled time.   I began my first free day by wasting time on the Internet.  It's amazing how much interesting stuff you can find, when you aren't looking for anything in particular.  My plan was to head out shortly after the kids went to school to do some grocery shopping, but I actually ended up leaving at around 11:30am.  Since I was not on a schedule, I decided to head to Alcampo (kind of like a Walmart Supercentre) which is part of a huge shopping complex in Sant Boi.   There is also a Decathlon (my favourite sporting goods store) in the complex.  So between Decathlon and Alcampo, I took my time to shop carefully and didn't get home until 2:45pm.  When I was homeschooling I would try to get to the store, shop, and get home within an hour.

So ironically even though I have way more time, I'm not necessarily getting more done.  I am going to have to discipline myself and try to stick to some kind of schedule because there is lots of stuff I need to do.

Ciara was fine when she got home from school.  She told me briefly about her day, and it was all pretty positive.  Ciara has judo every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30pm, Nathan does his judo class right after at 7:30pm.  Ciara never complains about doing judo, but she doesn't seem to interact much with the other kids in the class.  I challenged her last week to at least say good-bye to her classmates. When I picked up Ciara after her class today, she told me that she said "Adios" to all the girls and smiled before leaving.   It's just a small thing, but it's a big improvement :)

I'm still trying to figure out what will be the purpose of my blog because I no longer have to track what we are doing for homeschooling.  I guess I can just blog about our day to day life in Barcelona, but I definitely won't blog daily, once a week should be enough.  Stay tuned!

Week 3, Tuesday

This morning, at 9am we had a meeting with the director of the American School of Barcelona to talk about how we could get Ciara registered in school and still homeschool at the same time.  The meeting went pretty well.  The director is supportive, but will not sign a document saying that Ciara is attending school this year, when she really isn't.  So he came up with a compromise:  we register Ciara and she attends school part-time and then I homeschool part-time.  We agreed that this could work for us.  How exactly it will work, we won't know until the director meets with the elementary principle.  Since grade 6 is pretty full, she might have to work with the grade 5s.

In any case, I am kind of relieved that we at least have a solution in the works that will allow me to continue homeschooling while also allowing us to comply with Spanish laws.  Ciara may benefit from attending school part-time as well.  It will mean that I will have to redo our awesome homeschool schedule, but at least I wrote it all in pencil.

Today we continued to work on improper fractions, this time the questions were word problems.  Word problems are a difficult for all of my kids.  Nathan, who works so hard in math, just can't seem to figure them out.  When Rylan and Ciara encounter a word problem they just look like deer caught in the headlights.  The word problems we did today, were pretty difficult.  Ciara has the skills to solve them, she just has a hard time determining which equations to use.  We did all of our math work on the chalkboard so that we could draw pictures and break down the problem into small steps.

For social studies, we are still looking at Greek mythology.  Ciara is fascinated with the stories about the Greek Gods.  Today she learned about Pandora's box.  Ciara was so excited about Pandora, that she had to recount the whole story to Verina when they began their Skype session.

Tonight, I took Ciara to her judo class again.  She was a bit apprehensive as we entered the gym.  I think that she always feels a wave of anxiety whenever she enters a crowded place.  Since she liked her first class, we signed her up and bought her a judo-gi.  She felt good about wearing her new judo-gi and when I picked her up after class, she said that she had a good time.  I was so relieved.  Nathan also decided to try a judo class and he liked it too.  So we will probably have two kids in judo.  I also signed Cole and Rylan up for swimming lessons at the local rec. center.  I feel like we are really broadening our horizons.  This is the first time any of my kids have attended extra-curricular classes outside of the school.

Week 2, Thursday

Today I let Ciara choose the next unit to study in math.  She chose improper fractions, which I think was a good way to review the unit on multiples and factors.  Because Ciara is receiving one on one instruction, she is able to ask more questions and I am able to see if she really understands a concept.  As a result, we are really covering a lot of ground.  We have finished over 3 math units in less than two weeks.

Today for our science period, we decided to work on simple machines.  Ciara had an idea to build a machine that can paint.  I told her to sketch it out for me on the chalkboard and tell me how it would work.  It was basically a lever, with paintbrushes at one end.  It was time to discuss how levers work.  We did a simple experiment that we found on the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry website.

Here's what our lever looked like:

I mentioned in a previous post that Ciara is much happier this year.  Last year she had a mostly negative attitude towards living in Spain.  Her overall negativity made it difficult for her to make and keep friends.  She didn't really like being around anyone, not even her family.  Now her attitude is starting to change.  Today I dropped her off at a friend's house and her son was home from school sick.  I was kind of worried, because last year, she couldn't stand to be around this boy.  She went out of her way to avoid him or was extremely unpleasant when he was around.  When I picked her up from his place this afternoon, Ciara was all smiles.  She told me that she had a great time playing with this boy.  What a difference!!  Honestly, I think that not having the stress of constant social interaction at school has made a huge impact on Ciara's ability to socialize.

Another evidence of change came this evening when I dropped her off at her very first judo class.  Just a few weeks ago, she told me that she would not do any after-school activities.  Then, this week she changed her mind, and was all of a sudden really excited to do judo.  I have found over the last couple of weeks since we started homeschooling that she is more willing to take initiatives and she is more willing to talk to people.  It reminds me of the way Ciara was before she started grade 1.  Interesting.