Bailey got to go to a play this week about Helen Keller called “The Miracle Worker.”  She loved it, and there was a Q&A afterwards with the actors that she took full advantge of. Apparently the actors were very impressed with her insightful questions and asked her if she was a budding actor.

A couple days after the play we got to have a very in-depth tour of Western Canada Theatre, the local professional theatre company that put the show on. We saw the wardrobe and props departments, and went to their large storage location to see their vast collection of costumes and props from years past. Then we went up to the theatre to see the Miracle Worker set.

Bailey visited her fellow unschooled friends in Ashcroft this week, too. She got to have a sleepover with them, and enjoyed her time with them. She finds them all to be very kind, and really looks up to them for that.

We haven’t filmed her show yet, but we did work on it some more this week. We hope to film today if her baby brother is okay going with Steve (Ocean has a cold). Then she’ll need to do some editing. I’ve talked with her about revising the time limit on her goals and she seems to understand that she may need to allow herself some more time.

Here is some of what she wrote about her week:

I went to my art class I made a 100% recyclable art project! Made with egg cartons, cereal boxes and lots more! The only things that weren’t recyclable were the paint, glue and paper clips!

All right, that’s it from us for now.

The most important thing that happened this week was a big discussion between Bailey and I about goal-setting.  It started out as a bit of an argument, but we managed to transform it into a very powerful discussion about how we could help her follow one of her passions even more.

Bailey loves cooking and baking, and she has a desire for public recognition that she was expressing as “I want to be famous!”  On speaking with her further, we decided that she could have a cooking show on YouTube.  I had her look up storyboarding, and make a plan.  She knows that she’ll only have 10 minutes (YouTube limitation) to do her show, so she is already planning how to edit for time but still keep things clear.  She made a storyboard, and wrote a script for her introduction.  In the next couple of days she will analyze her recipe and plan out how to make the recipe in front of the camera.  She will measure all of the ingredients into small containers (just like on TV), and is looking forward to editing the video.

She also found a great website for goal-setting, and made and printed out a plan.  It gave her questions to answer/statements to complete, and she wrote:

Goal: “To make a cooking show and cook for it every 3 or 4 days.”
Because: “Because I love to cook!  I find cooking easy.”
I will: “I will set aside around 10 minutes each day, to think about what I’ll do.  Find a quiet place to think.”
Watch out for: ”Getting sick!  Not being able to cook.”
Support: “Mommy-she can take Ocean away for silence.  Steve-Same as Mommy, and let me use his computer for editing and uploading.”
Stay on track: “Print off more recipes.  Think of more recipes.”

She has also been writing a lot this week, and since she was so busy I didn’t have her write for this O4L.  She spent quite a bit of time perfecting one of her stories.  She also wrote a song.

Bailey spent one night with her Dad this week, and is excited to meet his fiancee, who will be arriving from the United States this week.  She and her Dad are getting along much better these days.  They went for a very long walk while she was there, and he has been supporting her with learning more about cooking.  She made an apple pie this week (at home) using his special recipe.  We didn’t have enough apples for two pies so she had to halve the recipe.

Monday
I did:
I made pie.
I ate pie.
I drew.
I learned:
Not enough flour makes apple juice at bottom of tin.
Pie is good.
I drew Crystals [a teddy bear] and me.

Tuesday
I did:
I changed my boutique. [For her fashion game online]
I changed my face [her avatar]
I watched Shrek.
I learned:
Changing boutiques is fun.
There are lots of options for your face.
Shrek is AWESOME!

Wednesday
I did:
Went to Chapters.
I learned:
I LOVE books.

Thursday
I did:
I had art class
I went swimming.
I learned:
How to make paint from rocks.
That my friends are awesome!

Friday
I did:
I learned what Steve wants for hours at work and how much money he will make.
I didn’t get to go to the gymnastics place. 
I learned:
Money is tight.

See what I mean?  I think a little more direction from me is in order, haha. 

Anyway, despite the above, Bailey did have an eventful week.  One of the highlights was Friday night when I put aside my soapbox for the evening and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with Bailey.  At one point she said to me, “Doesn’t the Canadian part of you feel kind of proud?” and I had to admit that, yes, it did.  We were both excited to watch to the First Nations dancers, too, as we knew one or two of them.

She did some science experiments this week, too.  Her favourite was a reflex test.  She taped a piece of paper to the back of a ruler, and coloured 1 inch thick bands on it.  Then we would hold the ruler above her hand and drop it.  She would write down what colour she managed to catch the ruler on.  (It is hard to explain this one in writing.)  She expected that her stepdad’s relexes would be better than hers or mine and she was correct.  (He is a rapier fighter–medieval style fencing–and his relexes are lightning quick.)

I hope that you are having a great week. 

She has been using the Wii Fit everyday,  and we have been going on more and more walks as the weather continues to be warm.

I had her look up the reasons why I ask her to stay physically active even though it is not her favourite thing to do, and she was able to tell me that it helps prevent obesity, and it’s good for her heart, among other reasons.

At her art class this week the children learned how to make paper.  Everyone left the class with bits of paper pulp in their hair, so I think it’s safe to say that a good time was had by all.

Bailey continues to work with designing fashions.  She has many outlets for this, including paper dolls, a program online, a game for her Nintendo DSi, and her own clothing.  She wants to learn to sew, so we are looking at getting a hand-me-down sewing machine from my mom for her to learn on.

Also this week, and against my better judgement, I allowed Bailey to buy a big (and I mean BIG) bag of Jelly Bellies, her favourite candy.  As a result, she has also researched, at my request, why she should be brushing her teeth even more often while we have this treat in the house!

The Jelly Bellies have had an upside though, and I don’t just mean because she is sharing them!  She had fun sorting the jelly beans into different colours, has looked up different flavour combinations online, and has researched how candy is made.

I am going to have Bailey help me with the O4Ls, I think.  I will have her write a quick blurb everyday to help remind me what she did that day and what her favourite thing was.  She is pretty excited about that.

Our biggest excitement of the week was a family trip to Kelowna, about two hours away.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to do much else besides hang out at the mall, but Bailey loves going on trips, and we were able to look at many stores that we don’t have here in Kamloops.  The mall has a time capsule, with two sections.  One will be opened in 2030 and another in 2105, and we talked about how old she would be when they were opened (31 and 106, respectively).  Bailey says that if we made a time capsule, she would put in a few coins from the current year, a pair of her shoes, and a book.

Bailey had a fun week.  She went swimming with Steve and Ocean on Sunday, and they stayed in the pool for 3 hours!  Bailey jumped off the small diving board and almost convinced herself to jump off the next higher one, but got scared at the last second.

She has also been using the Wii Fit more often these days, trying out yoga and balance games. 

Kamloops has been having a remarkably mild winter, and Bailey and I have been in flip flops for weeks now.  We took a nice, long walk mid-week, and Bailey rode her scooter most of the way.

Also in the “Wellness” category, Bailey has been noticing that she gets grumpy when she is hungry, so we have been making more of an effort to pay attention to how much she has eaten, and what.

This week was also a very creative week.  She started her art class at the Kamloops Art Gallery, and did some work with pastels and charcoal.  The class got a tour of the art gallery, and got to see an exhibition of Emily Carr’s and Jack Shadbolt’s work.

Bailey was excited to help us with our living room rearrangement.  Steve entered the dimensions of our living room and our furniture into a program called Rhino and we were able to test out numerous combinations before moving all the heavy furniture around.

Bailey and I watched a DVD of Season 1 of Project Runway  this week.  We absolutely loved it, and Bailey got very inspired to create some more fashions for paper dolls.

As mentioned, she spent Tuesday night at her grandparent’s house here in town.  Her Dad lives there right now, so she was able to spend some time with him.  They made cookies, and he lent her some books, including one about the plants on the coast of B.C.  She saw a Monkey Puzzle tree in Sechelt and tried to find it in the book.  Other than that she just looked through the book for fun.

Wednesday was spent travelling.  They saw a moose outside of Merritt.  They stopped in Vancouver for lunch, and then caught their ferry.  Bailey was wondering how the ferry floats with all those cars and people on it.  We talked about buoyancy (helped by this website) when she got home.  (Funny: I asked her what happened to the water when she got into a bathtub and she said, “Uh, it gets dirty?”  )

On Thursday Bailey went to the beach with her Grandpa.  She brought home three seashells for us.  She thinks she noticed the tide going out.  That night they went to Gibson’s and saw Avatar.  Bailey loved it!  She liked the cute stuff in the movie the best.

Bailey’s big adventure on Friday was going horseback riding!  It was the first time she had ever been on a horse, and she wrote quite extensively about it.  Her horse’s name was Jewel and her horse was tied to the owner’s horse just in case.  She was a little scared at first, but by the end she was sad to go.  They weren’t allowed to gallop but they did trot a little.

Friday night she used her constellation book and tried to find some stars with her Aunt’s boyfriend, but it was a bit too overcast.

They left early on Saturday.  Bailey saw the Olympics countdown clock in Vancouver.  She must have been listening to the criticisms that Steve and I have been making about the Olympics, because she gleefully told me about a particularly rude piece of grafitti she saw.  “But they misspelled Olympics, mommy!  They spelled it O-L-Y-M-P-I-X!”  She was more offended by the error than anything else, ha ha.

And that’s it!  I’m on the mend from what I now think was food poisoning for sure, so hopefully Bailey will have a fun week this week, too!

She was really inwardly focussed this week, and did a lot of work on “self-improvement.”  Because Steve and I were sick, Bailey had to be a bit more self-reliant this week when it comes to food, and she enjoyed the challenge, even taking it to the next level and making a lunch meal plan for herself.

She attempted to make bread this week, and it sure was delicious, although it didn’t rise as much as she wanted, possibly because she cut the recipe in half.

She made a chore chart for herself on a website called handipoints.  She included things like “observe the weather for 5 days,” along with things like “empty the dishwasher.”

She also played “house” this week with her many dolls, creating an elaborate scenario in which she had 8 kids. 

Bailey is still enjoying her keyboard, and has offered to teach her friend what she knows.  Bailey made a worksheet for her friend, and is looking forward to teaching her soon.

Bailey is excited about the coming week as she is going to Sechelt with her grandparents to visit her Aunt.  She has been busy looking at Google Earth to see where they will be going.

Hope you have a great week!

The Visa re-load happened this week, so we were able to purchase some books.  Among them was a book of science experiments.  Bailey and I started an experiment to make a stalactite using string suspended between two glasses filled with water and baking soda.  She was interested to hear how they are actually formed and how stalagmites and columns are then formed.

She also made a pop bottle vortex this week, and read about why it works the way it does.

Bailey looked over her Grapes of Math book some more this week, and managed to solve all of the puzzles!  It was nice to see her relaxing into numbers rather than allowing her fear of math overcome her.

She had a big upset this week, too.  It snowed a lot on Tuesday and it was perfect snowman snow.  We spent 1/2 an hour building a large snowman on the front lawn of our apartment building and then came inside.  Not even 30 minutes later we heard some kids goofing around, looked outside, and saw that they had completely destroyed her snowman.  She cried and cried.  I tried to explain that not all teenagers are so insensitive, but her feelings were too raw.

And that’s what I can remember for this week.  Sorry it’s short, my brain is fuzzy!

This was the week I always forget about… the lazy, pajama-filled days between xmas and New Year’s.  I think it’s my favourite part of the holiday season.

Making this week even better was the fact that my best friend was in town–Bailey calls her “auntie.”  She brought Bailey her Body Worlds book to borrow.  Bailey went to the Body Worlds exhibit with her grandparents a couple years ago and really enjoyed it, but she doesn’t have any souvenirs so she was happy to look through the book again.  We had an interesting discussion about the ethics of this show.

More cooking for Bailey this week.  She made a delicious macaroni salad and some chili.  She also made a meal plan for me, taking into account the ingredients we already have in the house, and minimizing the groceries we’d have to purchase.

She got lots of exercise sledding this week.  I was watching her and estimating how far her sled went and I really think it was close to two city blocks!  Of course she then had to pull it up the hill with her… while wearing heavy snow pants and snow boots. 

She finally got the game she was saving up for, and has been enjoying running her own fashion boutique.  Her new game came in handy for the day trip she took to Merritt with her grandparents to visit her Aunt and baby cousin.  They did some more sledding and Bailey got to hold puppies that are only a few weeks old.

I bought Bailey a couple of books this week.  One is a book about hamster care.  It is really unique because it talks a lot about hamster behaviour.  By the way, Bailey has also learned that hamsters are not nocturnal as is commonly believed.  They are actually crepuscular, meaning they are active at dawn and at dusk.

The other book is called ”The Grapes of Math.”  Bailey has enjoyed seeing the patterns on each page and has related it to skip counting (ie: counting by 2s, counting by 5s, etc.).

Lazy pajama days are over for us now!

I’ll still be posting here every week so keep visiting.