With Dad

 Tyson was accepted into the Hi-Cap (highly capable) program at school.  One of the things that I didn't really like about Richland School District was their handling of the hi-cap kids.  If they qualified for both Math and English, they were asked to go to a particular school where it challenged such kids all day.  If they didn't, however, or you chose to keep them in your home school, there wasn't anything special they'd do.  If they didn't have teachers like Tyson's 3rd-grade teacher, they wouldn't be challenged.  

Because he'd come late in the year to the class he wasn't able to do the first project.  The new project will be to actually build a house with an interior, which will take 6-weeks to research, plan, and construct.  He's excited.  To break up some of the "work," they also do fun activities and then share the results in video format for all to see.  Today, Tyson's activity was to use the toilet paper rolls we'd collected over Thanksgiving break to either 1) make it into an art project, or 2) make it into a marble run.  I wish I could have recorded Tyson's excitement and voice as he told me about it.  "Mom, I bet you can guess which one I'm going to do!"

As he was figuring out ideas and talking through some of the logistics of it, I mentioned that he should talk to Randy about some of the angles and tools Randy has to know exact angles.  The second Tyson said he was making a marble run, Randy was all in.

It was so much fun to listen to them analyze things.  Randy would ask Tyson something and wait while Tyson worked it out in his head.  They would try one little thing and then over and over tweak it, getting things just right.  If it looked as if one thing was slipping just a tiny bit, they'd reinforce it and try again.  Randy taught him many different things for just this one project.

"Hi, my name is Tyson Dirks.  I chose to use my toilet paper rolls to make a marble run.  I used six toilet paper rolls, one paper towel roll, 1 PVC pipe, 1 Solo cup, and painter's tape.  I tweaked and tested my marble run until I had a 90% success rate.  Enjoy!"  Cutie!

He was excited to be the first one to add his video to the class assignment.  

Later that day, our Science had us doing an experiment that was kind of labor intense.  We not only had to gather things from all areas of our house and yard but work intricate holes into the bottom of the bags that could be hung with kite string.  Having little hands that don't know how to be too delicate, it took a lot of restraint to let them do it on their own.

With the can taped to the edge of the table, they centered the meter stick and leveled everything out.  Using the heat dish, which doesn't force air out like other heaters do, we placed it heat-side up under one of the bags to watch the hot air rise.  The kids were thrilled to watch it slowly rise after all of their hard work.

After Tyson finished all of his work, ending his school day after 9 hours of constant work, Tyson said, "Mom, I love working with you, and I love that our Science experiment actually worked, but the best part of my day was working with Dad on that marble run."  I had already guessed that would be the highlight of his day after he muttered under his breath on the way to math tutoring, "I love working with Dad."  He wasn't talking directly to me, he was talking to himself.  I find that very endearing.