Sonya's Blog - Day 72 - First Day of School and Mactaquac Provincial Park

Sonya’s Blog - Day 72 - September 2nd - First Day of School and Mactaquac Provincial Park

I had this idea that I was going to get up early this morning and take Kizmet for a good walk first thing. I decided I would head to the Tim Horton’s with her because it is about 2 1/2 KM down the highway, but I can take the TransCanada Trail there and then go up to the road right beside the Tim’s. Blake decided to join me and we headed out right before 7, I thought about going at 6:30, but it was still quite dark and I didn’t want to walk in the dark through the trees. We hoofed it pretty good and we were there and back in under an hour, we were much slower on the way back as our beverages kept spilling if we went too fast:) It was a good way to start the day.

When we got back, the kids were not up, what a surprise. They were supposed to be up by 7:30, but unless we get them up it is a no go. We got them up and made a plan for the first week of school. Isaac will do some revision work and Natasha will work with us to make her learning schedule. We managed to get on the Alberta Learn Website and she did some of the math tutorials they had on there for Grade 9 and then caught up on her blogging. Natasha discovered that she can download the math text that they use in her school onto her ibooks, so she is going to do that. If she has the text book, she can do math whenever she wants, whether we have internet or not. She has already done some reports on Native Americans and some book reports for me, so I need to read through those. For Social Studies, she is going to do a report on the formation of Canada in French.

Isaac did some multiplication tables, some letters (his writing is terrible and he has not learned cursive, so we are going back to basics) and he has to read 4 chapters of his book The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde. He will be submitting a book report on the book. For Social Studies he will be doing a report on WWI in French for us. He also has to fill in the map of Canada, so we can see what he remembers and what he needs to learn. After Canada is mastered he will work on the geography of the USA. In Science he is starting on his tree project. He has taken pictures of trees in almost every State and Province we have visited so far, he needs to identify each tree, state whether it is deciduous or coniferous and some other things (I need to look at the learning plan). He will be making a scrapbook of all his trees, this will be an ongoing project all year.

It is a start, we will be making a month by month lesson plan and then break that down into weekly lessons. That should help all of us stay on track.

We were done at noon, so we decided to head out to Mactaquac Provincial Park to check it out. It was only about 30 minutes away. It was just a small park, it had a golf course, campground and a nice beach. We had lunch there and Isaac and Blake played in the water. Natasha just wanted to read her book. We walked Kizzy around and then Blake and I played Donkey with the frisbee. I was totally dominating, but then had some bad catches and ended up losing by one letter - so close. Blake had the dropsies at the beginning so that gave me a great edge, but not enough.

When we got back to the campsite, Blake and the kids headed to the pool. It had got increasingly muggy as the day went on and they wanted to cool off. I stayed behind. Isaac is finding The Last Dragonslayer a little confusing, so I wanted to read it to make sure he is understanding the gist of it. The author is setting up a whole new world and Isaac thinks he should completely understanding everything that is happening, but he is only a few chapters in and they are still setting up the story. It’s all good, he gets the story so far.

It was my turn to make supper. Blake had stopped at a local farmer’s stand and bought some veggies and informed me that he bought some zucchini so could I make my zucchini pasta. Sure thing, super easy and super tasty so not a problem. I whipped that up with Natasha’s help and we had it with a salad. It was tasty and filling.

Natasha volunteered to do the dishes so I took Kizmet out for her after supper walk. Isaac wanted to walk with me. I decided to take the TransCanada Trail, but I headed the other way this time - away from town. It was pretty, just through the trees. After she did all her business we came back, but Isaac wanted to take her down to the river for some fun. We went down there and threw rocks and Kizzy raced around in the water and dug them up from the bottom. She won’t swim, but loves to run up and down in the shallow water. It is a very calm river, The St. John, so it is great to play around. It turns out they have great skipping stones on the bank as well so Isaac and I found a whole bunch and took turns skipping our stones. Isaac had really good luck this time and even got one stone to skip 6 or 7 times, that was a first for him. The river is so calm and the rocks so flat, it is great skipping conditions.

We went back to camp as it was getting dark. Kizmet had drank a lot of water and was really wet so we all sat outside, Isaac continued reading and I started blogging. Kizmet drank too much water and is not feeling well, poor thing, but I am sure happy we stayed outside! Blake was out buying a new TV, but once he got back he started the fire and we relaxed around it for a bit. It’s pretty rough being us sometimes!

Sonya