Maths update

I last wrote about the girls' maths work back in May of 2020.  It's time for another update.

Both girls continue to do a little maths work every day, year round.

Miya:

As of today, Miya has completed 63% of Khan Academy 6th Grade.

If she was in the US she'd be starting 6th Grade in September (at the very youngest end).

Mulan:

Mulan has completed Khan Academy 8th Grade and Algebra 1, and is 41% through Geometry.

I think I am right to say that Algebra 1 is taught in 9th Grade and Geometry is taught in 10th Grade.

If Mulan was in the US she'd be starting 9th Grade in September.

However, Mulan has now officially started school in New Zealand, entering Year 10 at Westlake Girls High School.  (I'll probably write more on this later.)  After a few days in a normal class, Mulan has observed that they are working on stuff that she covered a couple of years ago.  We're now talking with Westlake about options for keeping her challenged in maths.  It seems that either she'll transfer to an extension class or her current teacher can give her other work.

School holiday non-holidays

Often school holidays are the worst time of the year for the girls, as all their fun activities stop.  But this time we had a fairly busy "holiday":

Two weeks ago, in week one of the holiday, both Mulan and Miya attended a four-day ballet show workshop.  This is for a production of Romeo and Juliet, which will have its performances in mid-September.

Following the workshop, every Sunday until the performance the girls will attend rehearsals.

From the sounds of things it's a fairly high level production.  Last Sunday, the TVNZ news crew were there at the rehearsal, filming and interviewing those involved.  Apparently it's going to be on the TV1 news sometime soon.

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Next up, on the Saturday and Sunday Mulan attended a two-day athletics training event put on by Aspire Academy (if you click the link you'll see a photo of the 2020 event, with both Mulan and Miya).

This time the focus was on pole vault, and Mulan had some good training sessions trying out pole vaulting for the first time.  I'm very jealous -- it looks heaps of fun and I've never tried it before!

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And then last week Mulan attended a four-day ballet seminar at Auckland Academy of Dance, preparing her for the Advanced Foundation exam coming up soon.

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Then there was gymnastics class and contemporary dance class thrown in, meaning that there weren't many empty days.

Pink climbs and handstands

For about the past six weeks we've been super-busy with several separate things.  Consequently, trivial things, like blogging and housework, have been minimal.

But things are starting to return to some normality now.  If I get around to it, I may blog about some of what we were up to.

This week, Miya and I returned to rock climbing after a three-week break.  Miya is moving up to the "Boulder Pros" advanced class this term, so we needed a quick de-rust.

There's been some interesting "pink" climbs added since our last visit, and yesterday and today Miya and I had a go at them all.

Here's Miya completing a handstand climb!

And another one that we both did:

Early birthday ninja warrior

Miya turns 11 next month.  For her birthday activity she wanted to try out the ninja warrior course at Jump, so that's what we did yesterday.

(With Mulan starting school in a couple of weeks, we had to do the birthday event early.)

Jump is a huge building full of trampolines. That's lots of fun in itself, but what's really awesome is the ninja warrior course tucked away in the corner.

If you're wondering what a ninja warrior course is, the one we did was a little bit like this, except without the water and the dynamic jumps.  But the essential obstacles were all there, and we had 12 to get through.  (Here's someone's home video from five years ago -- it all looks the same as what we did.)

We booked in advance online, paying $19.50 each for one hour (Mama decided to watch, not participate).

After a brief warmup of jumping, Mulan, Miya and I got stuck into the ninja course.  There's a children's version of the course, but we all went for the adult one (all over 150cm), trying out each of the obstacles first before doing a timed race.

Miya raced first, and successfully completed all 12 obstacles in 5min 30sec.

Mulan completed six of the 12 obstacles in 5min 17sec.  (In practice she did two other obstacles, but was too tired to get them in her full race.)

I completed 11 of the 12 obstacles in 3min 52sec.  (I didn't attempt the cannonball alley obstacle, as my golfer's elbow injury is still too sore for gripping hard.)

Finally, we finished off with some more trampolining.

Our thoughts?

The compulsory non-slip jump socks (for $2.50) were great for the trampolines, but were terrible on the ninja warrior course.  On the ninja warrior TV show everyone wears shoes on the course; we have no idea why Jump requires everyone to wear socks.  My feet slipped inside my jump socks, making some of the obstacles dangerous.  As a result, I had to hold back a lot, especially with the warped wall obstacle.

A few of the holds were loose and spinning -- not sure if it was intentional or not well maintained.  The stop button on the timer was broken.

Overall, it was lots of fun, and definitely well worth it (though it's just a one-off for us and we won't go regularly).  A great family birthday outing for Miya!