Robotics joy part 2

Robotics Joy

After six weeks of heavy practice and preparation, the robotics tournament happened! Many people do not realize that the FLL is a tournament with three rubrics the kids must fulfill. The first is the MISSION where they program robots. The second is the PROJECT where they come up with a solution to an open ended real life problem. The third is CORE VALUES where they show team work and gracious professionalism.

Our team was so green the sap was dripping from us. Our project was wonderful, but not technological. Our missions were 80% successful...some of the time. Our team is composed of people who had just met. We had no idea how this was going to turn out.

After an hour at the competition, Marina turned to me and said, "This is amazing! I want to do it every year!" I don't blame her. Adding a competition aspect to the intense learning and creating that the students did makes the experience authentic and real in a way beyond regular classroom learning. I think Marina's new friends felt the same way because all of them were ready to sign up again next year before the competition had even begun.

Our team came in 10th for the missions. Our team did ok with core values.

Our team won the trophy for their project which was designed to help seniors deal with loneliness by setting them up with play dates with young people. It is hard to describe the joy and excitement they felt when their team name was called and they found out they won a trophy!

I am so proud of these kids and their enthusiasm and their sportsmanship!

In a side note

Yesterday, we completed our robotics season by taking our trophy to long term care to show our senior mentors. As the kids talked about their experience, the three seniors who had come to listen to their talk all fell asleep. Marina turned to me and said, "I think we should stop this presentation. We don't want to wake them."

I love these kids, and I love robotics!

Things I Do

Everyone runs to school in the dark in Razdolna

On days like today, I should be studying.  I have so much to do.  I have no intellectual freedom to pursue creative endeavors.  It is not like the school work is extraordinarily difficult.  There is just so much of it.

Vince was tired of people stealing his socks so he went with Pink Camo

Every Wednesday I am taking up precious free space in this classroom.

Are you amazed by my professionalism?

Oh, and there is Girl Scouts... We spent the weekend in Kenai at the Hay Maze, Nikiski Pool, and Challenger Learning Center.

This is me in the kitchen of the Challenger Learning Center...Looking good at 8pm.  This is right before I went and passed out and everyone got a good laugh out of my snoring!

Marina is involved in a robotics tournament that is taking up quite a bit of time.

Time is precious.  Children are precious and they are growing up all too quickly. I had better get on with the getting on. There are only about three weeks left until we head out to Sri Lanka and I still have a lot to get done!

Did I just compose a poorly crafted un-rhyming poem?  See, my creative energy is trying to escape at all costs! Even in cheesy closing sentences.

Hawk-Shaming

 Marina and I have become addicted to a little blog called 'Dogshaming'.  Everyday we look at the latest entries into the world of dogs that should be ashamed of their behavior.  Today we have a new entry into the world of shamed animals...

 This hawk made its way into our chicken yard and could not get out.  Vince was coming up from the lower meadow behind the coop when he heard the racket and came running.  Trying to find a way out of the pen was this hawk... angry, panicked, but mostly... ashamed! 

We did some clever maneuvering and were able to release it before it hurt itself or any of our animals.  It was only able to fly across the street before it had to stop and rest.  We continued giving it chase so that it would not think about returning.  This is giving me pause to consider how much smarter a hawk is than a chicken.  His escape tacktic seemed sharp and clever.  And his brain is about the same size as that of a chicken.  Hum...

Meanwhile, all the chickens were hiding in the coop like a bunch of chickens.

And the ducks huddled in the driveway considering which of the hens may not have made it. I thought perhaps they were considering why we let the hawk go. But, seriously, I doubt that.  It is unfortunate that they are much more interested in gossip and the fate of their coop mates than any husbandry philosophy.

McNeil School Fall Carnival (otherwise known as the Halloween Show!)

 The evening sunlight is stretching dramatically over the bay now.  The leaves have all vanished from the trees.  The wind is making those same trees creak devilishly. It is the perfect time of year for everyone in the Greear house to pretend to be someone else...if only for a few days.  This can only mean one thing is coming! 

 

  Halloween!

 

This year Falcom is being possessed by his alter ego:  Sexy Chucky.  The actual 'Chucky' from the Chucky horror movie franchise was not cute enough for his tastes.

As you can see from this picture, the full 'Sexy Chucky' effect is missing the orange stockings.  Orange stockings do not stretch over the thighs of sexy islanders!

Marina is embodying her alter-ego, Hermione Granger.  She made everyone in the family a wand last night out of alder wood.  She is smart, brave, and heroic! 

They have just arrived home with their loot.  Isn't it interesting?   A couple of years ago all she wanted to do at the carnival was work in the fishing booth.  Now, she plays with friends and is not afraid of the haunted house.  Falcom is not afraid of the haunted house either.  He spent his time working in the haunted house as a 'sexy dead dancer'. 

Oh!  How my children have grown.  Oh!  How I love them...

A Month? What the Heck!

 It is a sad situation when every picture taken in a family is work or school related.  That is where I find myself positioned at this time.  This picture for instance was taken on our "Coffee Cup factory tour".  Marina and Iris had a great time learning how paper cups are made. 

 Here is a picture in a dress given to her by Grandpa last summer which I never took a picture of her in.  That is our friend Katy in the background.

 Katy gave us these beautiful dishes so that we could have fun tea parties with the Girl Scouts.  Marina learned how to make rainbow swirls with the frosting thanks to Sharon at Two Sisters.

 Vince came home from hunting and gave Winchester this huge bone.  Luckily it vanished because it gave him terrible gas.

Marina and I took this picture so that we could email it to the orthodontist and show him the part of her gear that was bothering her.  I think it is cool to keep track of all the changes going on in her mouth.

Falcom had a great month of soccer.  It caused there to be a great deal of driving back and forth to town, but was well worth it!  I think he will play again next year.

Willie is Willie.  His job at the harbor is finished.  He is waiting for his next job while looking for the next.  He is wonderful and Marina's best buddy.

My school is taking up a great deal of my time, even though it seems like it should be less...  less units should equal less work, right?  UG!

In two months we will find ourselves here:

And that will make all of this crasiness worth it!

Homeschooling - Marina

 

Marina was getting stomach aches.  They were annoying.  Mostly they annoyed me because they were happening right before bed each night and in the morning when she had to go to school.  I took her to the doctor after months of listening to her complain.  The doctor thought it could be stomach acid but probably not.  There was nothing that could be done.  The poor girl (and her father and mother) had to suffer through it.

Remarkably, since we have been homeschooling her stomach problems have ceased.

Why am I starting this blog with this health update?  Well, I was thinking I could explain our decision to homeschool by expouning on my belief in school choice.  I could go on for hours about my philosophy of education.  I could accredit it to our pending vacation.  All of those things are true.  

 The bottom line though, is that Marina was not doing well at McNeil.  Something that she could not define and that her teachers could not identify was bothering her and causing her stress.  Since she has been home the only time her stomach has been bothering her is when her dad is gone to work and she is looking for reasons to crawl into bed with me.

What does Greear Family homeschooling look like on the ground?  What are the days like?  Marina has an office where she has the privacy she feels she needs to complete the tasks that she and I have agreed to for the day.  These tasks include math, science, reading and writing.  We had a social studies lesson the other day at the Middleton Homestead when we showed up just in time for Marina to watch the ferrier shoe their horses.  On another day, we went to the Kilcher Homestead where Charlotte was preparing to use a ringer washer (yes, the kind my grandmother had) and Charlotte taught her about the phrase, "Don't get your tit caught in a ringer."  Important stuff.

She had a unit on bee studies and spent over an hour sitting out in the sun with her father watching as the worker bees violently kicked out drones and brought in many varieties of pollen in all different colors.  They then extracted and spun honey. 

She is taking Manerine lessons with her friend Abby from Min Hui every week.  Learning this type of Chinese is not easy, but she is good at it and is loving it. 

We vacation sat a bunny for a week.  All that caring for the bunny that Marina did convinced her full heartedly that she does not need to have a bunny, hamster, Guinna pig, or mouse living with her in her room ever.  Might have been the best lesson of the week. 

We have made pickles and jam.  Worked over the details of the Swiss Family Robinson and laughed about how that family "killed everything!"  We are moving on to the voyage of the KonTiki but the size of the volume is daunting to her. 

There have been days where the math and language work has had to be pulled from her irritated 'bumble bee trapped in a jar' self.  Her grumbling over having to rigorously follow the math and language arts plan has discouraged me more than once.  Then I went out to Razdolna to do my teaching practicum and I watched the kids:  their attention and drive fluctuates in and out.  They are not all interested in what their teacher is saying every minute of their day.  It's normal.  In all honestly, Marina may complain to start the task, but she is giving more attention to what she needs to be doing in that moment than she would have in a classroom full of distraction.

Has this affected my social life?  Well, it's a good thing Irene moved and I am not trying to juggle Regular Tuesday with her and my work at Grassroots Salon.  Having Marina around would have otherwise put a serious cramp in my gossip!  HA!  Just goes to show that homeschooling is even improving my karma!

Not to mention preparing her for a zombie apocolypse :).