CHANGE OF PLANS

Good afternoon people.  Hope that I find you well.  It's very wet here and dull and overcast, but can't complain as 1) we have had so much dry weather that the garden still needs the rain and 2) we weren't planning on going anywhere today, so weren't going to get wet.

Our original day was supposed to run like this:
Callum get up
Callum have shower
Breakfast
Computer Studies
Science Theory
Lunch
Friend round to play

However, it kind of ran like this:
Me up
Me plan lesson
Me waiting for Callum
Me giving up waiting and making tea and toast and taking Callum breakfast in bed!!!
Callum get up and have shower
Lots of discussion and moaning from Callum.
Computer Studies and Science Theory gets combined
Lunch
No friend to play   :-(  but meet up online on Roblox   :-)

Callum has taken to watching comedy on TV at night in his room and normally he stops about 11pm. However, last night he was still up watching until about midnight, which meant I had to wake him at 9.30am this morning in the vain hope that we might be ready by 10am to start 'lessons'.  We spoke, again, about it this morning once he was finally up.  I don't mind him watching TV, but he needs to remember that 'late' nights should be Friday and Saturday and any other night should finish about 10.30pm with a bit of reading to calm him down so he can get some sleep.  He then proceeded to say that the book he is reading, Brave New World, is too hard to read at night and he hasn't got another book.  Not a problem, but would have been nice to know earlier.

Much discussion ensued about how I agreed that BNW is a bit hard going and perhaps he should read it in the day as part of lessons and that we should pick another book off the list that better appeals to him that he could read in the evening.  We also discussed recording programmes that are on after 10/10.30pm so he can watch them earlier in the day (he does have a recordable box in his room).  At this he decided to have a moan about the fact that Tivo doesn't have a delete folder option and that deleting individually annoys and frustrates him.  Looks like that task will be down to me then.  But at least I think he's agreed that recording would be a viable option.  Just got to get him to choose a book now.

Finally we get started on 'work'.  We finished off Plants project by writing up the leaf experiment that was overdue and then collating any bits and pieces that we had lying about before putting in Science folder.

Slippery Leaves - how leaves lose their moisture.  Leaves had Vaseline rubbed into them as follows: left to right; underside (the vein side), none, all, topside.  Then were left hanging in the sunlight for about a couple of weeks.

Leaves before experiment

Leaves after experiment

Then he had a go at some Bitesize activities on BBC website with regard to Acids And Bases And Metals and Behaviour of Matter.  We are now going to look at Chemistry.  The plan being 4-6 weeks on Biology, then the same amount of time on Chemistry and then same again on Physics, then back to Biology and so on.  This project will be on the behaviour of chemicals and matter; acids and alkalines being something we looked at last year.  He did pretty well considering we haven't really covered all the work yet.  Scoring 9 out of 14 for the Acids one (the questions he got wrong were subjects we hadn't covered at all) and 5 out of 5 for the Behaviour of Matter test.  So very pleased with himself and so I am.  That's being pleased with him not me being pleased with me, haha.

He also completed a bit of 'homework' from last session of Mad Science at Faversham which was code breaking and then we discussed chemical reactions and what I was hoping we will achieve over the next 4-6 weeks.

He did look up some videos on chemical reaction on Khan Academy, but they were a little too advanced (college level) for him to understand.  His description of a 15 minute video where he lasted 5 minutes:

"Got it, got it, yep, understand, no, lost it!"

The fact he lasted a 1/3 of the video was impressive enough for me!!

This afternoon he was supposed to have a friend over to play, but due to weather and logistics it just became impossible for him to be here, so they arranged to meet online on Roblox instead where they could play and chat together.

Anyway, that about sums up our day so far.  Nothing planned for later, so he'll probably do the usual computer/TV combination with dinner thrown in somewhere.  Tomorrow we are back at Faversham for more Mad Science and a social meet up.

Cya