Thursday, February 11, 2010

SIDES - close to a month now

We had our first review meeting with Stephen's teacher last week. Having SIDES nearby is nice because we can see the teacher in person and build a face to face relationship. She let us know we have quite a lot latitude in how we approach the circumlum. She is willing accept alternatives to assignments.

Stephen has now finished Grade 4 math and started grade 5 math. He is doing grade 5 work in all the other subjects already except for science where he is finishing the second half of the grade 4 circumlum.

Stephen is currently writing a news cast for his Thursday morning creative writing class. He has chosen to make it the super hero news. Next week he gets his first podcasting lesson.

Wednesday Sheila and Stephen went to the Symphony performance at UVic for school kids. The concert is called Musical Mechanisms and introduces the kids to how an orchestra works:
This concert titled ‘Musical Mechanisms’ will give students and teachers the chance to look at the different sections of the orchestra and how, like the working components of a car they all work together to run smoothly. Students join conductor Giuseppe Pietraroia, the 'prospective buyer at the orchestra dealership' on an eventful 'test-drive'. The members of Music Corner perform as dealership staff, demonstrating roles of the different instrument families through pieces that feature each section.


He is also very interested in the Virtual Science Fair. He wants to enter the categories with the most prizes. From this he has decided to do a project on improving the efficiency of internal combustion engine, specifically how to use the heat generated by the engine to create usable energy. He is think some sort of heat exchanger to create steam to run small turbine.

Stephen is taking less time from us to get through his work, but having Stephen here and Max is not going to work for our working lives. Max will be going into care, we found a daycare two blocks away.

I am trying to find interesting and engaging online resources, any thoughts about this would be much appreciated.

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