C's Journey

Friday, March 16, 2012

Karate Kid!

Friday, January 13, 2012

Balancing Academics with Fun and Social Interactions

C is very good at academics, there's no denying it.
Homeschooling has been great so far. He enjoys it and is diligent at getting his work done, albeit with some prodding from me(mom).

What he needs, are more interactions with other children, so when I heard about Brick4Kids, I thought it was a wonderful idea. Here you have instructional time where the children get to learn some basics on physics and architecture, then they have free-play with the Legos. He enjoyed building a motorized plane with a team-mate. The plane, which rotates it's propellers was a good place for the kids to start. After instruction, the kids had time to rearrange the plane's configuration and have fun with it. Then, they were allowed to play, free-for-all.

C wanted a specific Lego head that was clear for his Lego man. Another boy had the clear head, so he politely asked, "May I please have that clear head? I'd like to make my Lego man interesting, and that head would be great." The boy quickly responded with a burst of, "NO!" C didn't give up, he asked the same thing once more, and received the same response. Yet, C still did not give up. He tried negotiating; "If you give me the clear head, I'll give you this cool sword". Good effort C! Still the answer was a sturdy "NO!". The other boy wrenched his body away from C. Another boy, perhaps his older brother even commented; "You should let him give it a try, "E". Yet the boy didn't let up. C came and told me, "That boy doesn't know how to share, I tried asking him nicely." I told him, "I know, I heard you kept trying without giving up. I'm proud of you for that, and you asked very nicely, and tried negotiating. You did an excellent job, but some people are like that." I offered him a different colored head, a flesh-toned one (as opposed to the standard yellow Lego heads) and said, "This one is different." He nodded and went on his merry way to find something else to do.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Coolest Christmas Gift!

C is definitely blessed. He really doesn't know how blessed he is. I think the coolest Christmas gift was his NEW COMPUTER! Even better, a custom built one and learning the basics of HOW to put together a PC. I wish I had THAT growing up!

Aunt Matsumi opening up the case and starting by putting in the DVD RW drive

Here C is helping to screw in the CPU. Look at all those cables inside

Thank you Aunt Matsumi!

Monday, December 26, 2011

Christmas 2011

It's HARD to get "C" to smile for the camera with his eyes ON the camera. He won't explain WHY he won't look at the camera when we tell him to. We often get upset at him for not looking at the camera. So, I think it's fair to make a note of it when he actually LOOKS at the camera AND SMILES. (drum rolllll......!) And the "Biggest Smile Award" goes to.... The Molecular Model for Organic Chemistry! It was among the dozens of lovely Christmas Presents that all deserved excellent smiles.

He had fun opening Mommy & Daddy's gift from Uncles Paul & Andrew and their girlfriends.

He got excited about these books!

Then started reading them, and had to be reminded that he has OTHER gifts to open

These are most of the gifts C received for Christmas this year. Thank you everyone for these AWESEOME gifts! Instead of opening the boxes of Cars 2 or Atlantis Legos like a normal kid would, C goes straight for the books and starts reading. Guess what the subject is...Chemistry.

A few hours later....still hasn't opened the Legos....

Notice his pants are changed and he has not socks on, because he went outside to help Daddy sift rocks out of the soil for the new garden bed. He made a few molecules from the manual that was in the Model Kit, then...

...he asked me to print up a Caffeine molecule, so I found one from the internet and he put this together without any help.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Replicating DNA

I had shown him a YouTube video of Semiconservative DNA replication a few months ago. Just last night, he decided to make a game of it with Daddy and told him, "We'll have a race on which side will win. I'll take one side and you take the other!" haha! He didn't recall what the names were but seemed to understand the basics of the replication process even though he'd watched it only once.

I thought it'd be a good idea to take this opportunity to teach him the proper names of the enzymes and their processes so I printed some things out. He was excited to look at the sheet saying how it's Chemistry too. Next morning, he decided he wanted to replicated the printed sheet on his pegboard and was hollering out, "Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, Cytocene!" over and over... The broken side is supposed to be the Okazaki Fragments, although he mentioned he wasn't finished putting the backbone on one side before I snapped the photo.