Ciara's 12th Birthday

October 24th, 2015

Weeks before her birthday, Ciara and I discussed what she might want to do to celebrate.  At first she said that all she wanted was a small family gathering.  I thought that it might be nice for her to invite a few friends from school and church as this would be her last birthday in Spain.  So we agreed that we would invite a few friends to have lunch at our favourite Japanese restaurant, Chi Ei, in Barcelona.

In the end, we had 16 people at the restaurant. Ciara invited 3 of her classmates from school, Chris and Arantxa and Maria Belen and Noelia from church and of course Asvin, Aryan and Manju came too.  After lunch everyone came back to our place to play in the club and have cake.  Ciara made and decorated the cake.  It turned out really nice.

All 16 of us eating sushi

Singing happy birthday

I think the cake had 5 different colours

Ciara was very proud of her cake

Week 5, Friday

This morning after the boys got off to school, Ciara and I got right into gardening.  We took our pansy seeds that we had soaked in water for 3 days and planted them in egg cartons and a few in an empty planter box off our back terrace.  I honestly haven't planted anything in years.  I am glad that Ciara has shown interest in gardening as this may help me to take care of what few plants we have here.  One of the nice things about living in Barcelona is the fact that we can garden almost all year.  I'm sure that we planted over two hundred pansy seeds, so let's hope we get at least a few flowers.

After we finished our gardening, Ciara wanted to learn more about Marie Curie.  I remember that she read a book about Marie Curie at my parent's place when we visited them in Vancouver this past summer.  Ciara and I watched a short video about her life, you can see it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx3tw5_marie-curie-biography_lifestyle.  I have to admit that I was wiping back tears at the end of the video.  I am glad that Ciara is interested in studying about such a great woman.  I am hoping that it will inspire her to achieve great things in her life.  Ciara took notes and then later made her own short movie about Marie Curie using Flipnote Studio on her DS. 

I received an e-mail from the school director this morning confirming that Ciara will be attending 5th grade and will be starting on Monday Oct. 20th.  So that means we have at least one more full week of homeschooling, yeah!

This afternoon for our cooking class, Ciara finally perfected the rainbow cake.  I hope that now we can move on to other recipes. 

For social studies this afternoon, Ciara wanted to take a break from Ancient Greece, so I let her choose what topic to study.  She chose the Black Plague and the history of chocolate.  Two very different topics, but both interesting in their own way.

Growing pansies

Maybe we'll get hundreds of pansies

Ciara watering the plants

Check out the awesome rainbow cake!

Cole enjoying some cake

Week 2, Friday

It's already Friday again.  The week went by so quickly.  This morning started out simple enough: rhythmic writing and Spanish homework and then math.  We are still working on the improper fractions unit.  We started doing a worksheet converting mixed numbers into improper fractions.  I asked Ciara a question, and she just refused to answer or even try.  I tried to break the question down, but she hit a mental wall and could not get past it.  She was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated.  Since we were getting nowhere, I told her to take a break.

About 15 minutes later, I went up to speak with her and encourage her to continue the lesson.  She had calmed down, and was willing to come down and try the problems again.   I told her that I would show her how to do the questions and she could just watch.  We went to the chalkboard and I wrote down the mixed number.  Then I explained step by step how to convert the mixed number into an improper fraction.  After the first question, she was able to do all the rest with very little prompting.  We both felt like we had accomplished something.

This is one of the advantages of homeschooling for Ciara.  When she is frustrated or angry, she just shuts down.  The only thing to do at that point is take a break from the situation and then come back a little later.  This is possible at home, but not so much at school.  If she is feeling stressed or frustrated during a class, she cannot ask for a 15 break.

Friday during lunch period is going to be our cooking class.  This time, Ciara wanted to make rainbow cupcakes.  She went on the Internet and found this video tutorial.  Here is what ours look like:

Not exactly like the video, but they still tasted fine.  Ciara was very excited to have Hideyo try one of the cupcakes.  Hideyo came over in the afternoon to work with Ciara.  Here is a picture of Hideyo timing Ciara as she practices doing mental addition as quickly as possible.

Hideyo is working with Ciara to try and help her to process and respond to information faster.  A lot of the activities they do together also help Ciara to develop a better working memory.  I am very happy that Ciara really wants to do her best when she is with Hideyo.