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RE: August Homeschooling Miscellany
Oh wow, nature won over the swimming pool! That doesn't often happen.
It took me a moment to see your Mohawk. It blended so well with the tulips! Lioncub was so right.
Izzy had a try at seeing whether coaching might be up her alley. It's a big club, though, and the level 3s were crazy enough. Apparently the level 1 and 2s are worse! She's just not got the voice to be heard over them. Plus, you know, after training 4 1/2 hours herself, she rather wanted a bit of the day back for R&R! ;D
Just had a quick look at mathbot. Izzy finds the Khan maths a bit boring. This looks much more up her alley. I'll have to get her trying it out. Thank you so much for mentioning it.
I don't know if it was always creek fed (by the one in the happy place photo) but if it was I reckon that would have done it XD
Crazy how, behaviour wise? Pixie seems to have been assigned to one child who appears to be one of those kids that pretty much needs someone to focus them all the time. And lately I've noticed that she's coaching like her coach which is kind of adorable XD She's enjoying it so far :) Guess Izzy just needed to find her coaching voice XD Pixie is usually pretty soft spoken (think quiet little girly girl) but can be loud and forceful when needed, maybe comes from having two brothers XD
If that's 4.5 hours in one session no wonder she wants some time out after XD Pixie does 4.5hrs in a week (2hrs one day and 2.5 on another) and I think she wouldn't mind more x_x
Good luck with mathbot, I was trying it out before getting the kids onto it and I'm now stuck XD Cub was having a great time til he got stuck as well and I can't logic enough to help him so we're going to have to get Dad to help XD I found out about it from one of @kafkanarchy84's unschooling posts.
Crazy in that they kind of run around over-excited and trying to get them all to focus for a moment while they instruct them on what's happening next is a challenge for even the louder coaches. They usually have at least two experienced coaches per group.
Yes, Saturday is a 4.5 hour session with a short fruit break. It's a 30 minute trip, so I don't want to take her extra days, so this would be the only time she could do at the moment. For level 5 and up they can train up to four days for 15 hours. Izzy just does 3 for 11.5 hours though. That is the absolute minimum they'd allow for her level without threatening to hold her back. They are one of the best achieving clubs SA. Some girls even score better than Gym Jets girls, as were now discovering. So the hours thing and their strictness on girls meeting the skill requirements is understandable. Apart from this, they do try to keep it enjoyable and they are like a second family to many.
I'll try and get Izzy onto mathbot today. I'd really like to see if she prefers it to Khan. I must go back and look through Grahams posts. I must have missed that one.
Do you split your levels into groups as well? Our particularly big classes tend to get split into smaller groups with one coach managing 5-8 kids. There is a cap on the classes but I can't actually remember what the number is, I want to say 12-15 but it could be as high as 20, all I know is there's a waiting list these days x_x Back when we joined up we managed to slot straight in!
Oh wow you do have a lot of hours, as I said before pixie would love to be able to do more I think. That 4.5hrs per week that she does is all she does because that's all they've got. I'm not sure how they'd fit any more hours than what they've got in though, managing the floor with everything that's happening on any given day is already a logistical nightmare that the coaches manage with remarkable efficiency XD
They do split into 2 groups when there are a lot, but groups have been as large as 15. There's never a waiting list for WAG, but they have to try out in the lower levels to be accepted now. The waiting list for general gym is huge. They've had to extend out to the local school gyms to try and reduce it. They want to extend the main gym again, but it doesn't look like it's happening any time soon.
Sounds pretty intense :O
Our PCYC doesn't have general gym (unless Tiny Tots, Gym Mites and Twist and Shout can count as general gym XD), everyone is just doing WAG or MAG but the competitions (we only do regionals and states) are optional. Everyone who passes badge test does regionals and whoever qualifies for states at regionals goes on to that. Everyone who doesn't does optionals or challenge comp. Anyone who doesn't want to compete doesn't have to. Not sure how the other PCYCs run, I spent a few years assuming they would all be similar but being a little bit more involved now I'm not so sure XD