New Boots

It seems as if every time we go for a walk, Callum and/or Declan have grown out of their boots. So last weekend, as we were buying last minute warm things for our Christmas trip, we also had to buy both Callum and Declan a new pair of boots.

This morning, we went  for a walk to walk them in; they went pretty well (and it was also a beautiful morning!).

Declan's feet are now officially as big as mine, according to shoe size. Callum's are slightly smaller because they are narrower.

Nice article about the boys

https://au.oneshiftjobs.com/blog/514/the-next-generation-of-entrepreneurs/

Bonus Julia and Declan post

I've just been sorting out our photos a bit, and came across this series of Julia and Declan swordfighting.

More maths

Evan and I banned my parents from rote teaching a particular maths formula (the integral of one upon xdx is log x plus a constant if you are interested) to Callum and Declan, on the grounds that it was bad enough that they taught it to me and Andrew and Robert.

So, undeterred, they decided to teach them a different one - that e to the power of iΠ = -1. Callum and Declan can both give you the correct answer if you ask them what it equals.

Callum's mind was just blown away the other day when I pointed out to him that he now knows each of those individual terms. He couldn't believe it was true. Sadly, the maths to prove it is beyond me (which I assume means you have to at least get to second year university maths) so it could be a while before he can actually understand it.

Maths homework

Declan has suddenly started getting homework again (I think his new teachers forgot, but someone told them they still have to do it, despite being term 4 of year 6).

So Declan had five tricky maths problems to do this morning. One of them involved placing lines carefully to split 11 crosses into individual spots. After trying quite a few different methods, including googling, he had pretty much given up. I tried googling too, and didn't find the actual answer, but a clue involving circles.

So we enlisted Callum, who converted the clue into a potential answer, which Declan then tested by using a ruler. Turned out it was right! Team work plus Dr Google supplied the answer.

We made a Christmas tree

Because we're going to be away at Christmas we've brought the whole event forward by a couple of weeks. That includes some early decoration.

So for the last couple of weeks we've been making a tree that fits our house. We took some electrical conduit and made two circles. We then joined them together with some picture-hanging wire. Lots of little bits of ribbon provided spots to hang decorations. The whole thing was then decorated and hauled up to the ceiling.

Total cost was less than $10. Fun in doing it was, as they say, priceless.

It is also worth noting that we got a glitter-covered parrot to sit atop the whole thing. Not because any of us really liked it or thought it was Christmas-y but because it meant a pleasant few minutes could pass with the kids doing the dead-parrot sketch. Callum does a pretty good John Cleese accent now.

A visit to Google

After the Pearcey Awards, Declan was chatting to Genevieve George who is the winner of an impressive array of entrepreneurial awards and serious financial backing for her business. He mentioned that Google had not responded to a letter that he'd written asking to visit - she said she'd fix it. The next day we had an invite to visit the Google offices.

So last Friday Cal, Dec, Nick and Nikita (with me riding herd) went and visited the Google offices. They were exactly as advertised, just bursting with cool features from arcade game rooms, through to hidden passageways behind bookcases, through to scooters and Dr Who art.

Declan came away reinforced in his belief that he either want to work for Google or start up his own company that makes enough money to do all the cool stuff too.

Sailing

Declan has taken to sailing with Nick Palmer on Saturday afternoons. Nick has been doing it for a while, and has persuaded Declan to join him as crew. This week, they had a very enjoyable, but disastrous, race. They failed to cross the start line (as they got the line wrong) capsized multiple times, and also failed to finish.

Declan came home tired but very happy, as he hadn't capsized before, so he'd made up for it this time! 

Tidy room

Now that Callum's various academic commitments are mostly done for the term (last one was a
"masterclass" on complex sentence structures to his English class on Friday) he decided he needed a tidy room.

So on Saturday, he spent a fair bit of time cleaning up the detritus in his room, even getting out the vacuum cleaner once he managed to clear the carpet enough to see it. I was impressed with his initiative!

Callum and Declan wow the Pearcey Awards

After winning their categories for the Young ICT Awards in August, Callum (with his car share monitor) and Declan's BIN I.T team (including Nick and Nikita) were selected to present their inventions to the Pearcey Awards presentation (for IT Entrepreneur of the Year) at NSW Parliament House this week.

They wowed the crowd with their great presentations, and in turn had a great time watching the university student's pitching competition, and being excited when the managing director of 3P learning (creator of Mathletics) was a tie for Entrepreneur of the year.

Afterwards, Declan was chatting with one of the Entrepreneur finalists, and she offered to organise a tour of Google for him, given he wants to work for Google when he grows up.

It was a fabulous evening, and all of them were very excited to be there.

Declan was inspired to go home and create his own T-shirt shop for the BIN I.T invention - you can buy your own T shirt here.

Callum's exams

Callum finished his exam season this week. Now that he is in Year 8, they take it a bit more seriously. He had a week of year 8 exams, and then the following week (this week) had to do his Year 10 Maths exam.

He has been disappearing into his room to study quite a lot, and his floor is covered in study notes, so hopefully it will all pay off when he gets his results.

Callum's geography assignment

Callum got a geography assignment from school this year, in which he had to choose a poor country, and compare and contrast it with Australia. He and his friend randomly picked Sierra Leone from the map, and was exclaiming to us about how bad the infant mortality was.

As we were having our weekly skype call with Bob and Ana and Julia, Bob reminded us that Ana had spent a year as a Medico del Mundo in Sierra Leone. So Callum did a special email interview with Ana to get some more understanding of what it was really like there.

He just got his assignment back and he got 100%! Which pleased both Callum and Ana mightily.

Declan and maths

Declan decided a few months ago that he would really like to be accelerated in maths, because he was finding maths really boring at school. (He had just learned pythagoras' theorem for the third time. So we bought some year 8 text books to test him out on, and he's been filling in the gaps we found (mostly about showing your working, but also about studying for himself without us telling him to) ever since.

So yesterday Declan sat the end of Year 8 Maths exam at Mosman this afternoon and did very well.

So he will start Maths in Year 9 next year. Probably in the same class as some of Callum's friends.

Classcraft

Declan is loving Classcraft which is the gamification his new teacher has introduced. He has now levelled up to level 5, and levelling up was the thing he was most looking forward to about Friday. Here is the latest picture of his character.

He says that it has improved the behaviour of some of the naughtier people in the class, so I guess it works!