Daily quiz

It's probably been a few years since I last prepared a school lesson for Mulan or Miya.

But a few days ago I spent a couple of hours working on a worksheet handout to give to them.

It was all Mulan and Miya's idea, and they demanded that I write it for them.

The reason?  Lately Mulan and Miya have got into doing the Stuff news website's twice daily trivia quizzes.  Each quiz has 15 multi-choice questions on general knowledge and newsworthy happenings.  Often the girls answer it first (separately) and then they grab me and watch me attempt it.  Results are slightly competitive, and this morning Mulan scored higher than me (Miya equaled me)!

A few days ago the girls decided that we could make up our own quizzes.  So, the plan was that the four of us would each design a 15-question quiz, and then we would each answer everyone else's quizzes.  Mulan and Miya wrote up a list of possible question topics, and our questions couldn't repeat topics.

The end result was that I had to research and write a quiz for the family.  It was a shock to the system to actually have to sit and prepare a lesson.

On Friday we sat around the dining table together and answered each others' quizzes.  Mama chose to do a China-focused quiz, while Mulan chose super-tough questions.

Lots of family fun, and some learning, too.

Three more green climbs

These are the three new green climbs that Miya completed at the Northern Rocks Boulder Bash last weekend.  (I wrote about it here.)

She re-did them during the week.  The second and third are tough ones, and Miya is not yet getting them every time.

Term 2 activities

Winter is coming, and school Term 2 started last week.

Once again Mulan and Miya are busy with lots of activities (and most activities are term-based).

Mulan:

Ballet/dance: Ballet continues to be Mulan's number one activity.  This term she has dance classes five days a week at Mainly Dance -- 6.75 hours of ballet and 2 hours of contemporary.

Athletics: Athletics is Mulan's number two activity.  Athletics competitions have finished for the season, but for the first time we've decided to do some winter training (Mulan and me together).  We're aiming for twice a week.  One session is running, and is mostly uphill/stairs reps.  The other is weights.

Music: Mulan has a private recorder lesson once a week, and continues to practice her instruments most days.  She also plays the ukulele or guitar with Yeye once a week.  While she enjoys music, it's not her main passion and she's decided (for now) to stop her private cello lessons.  Pre-Covid, last year she was preparing for the cello Grade 5 exam, but that has now stopped.

Swimming: Mulan has two fitness squad sessions a week with NZL Swim.

Gymnastics: Mulan has one lesson a week at North Harbour Gymnastics.

Rock climbing: Mulan has one lesson at week at Northern Rocks.

Newspaper delivery: Mulan has just started delivering the Property Press paper.  It takes her about 1.5 hours once a week.

School: Mulan catches the bus once a week to my Big Sis' home, where she spends the day doing schooling with her cousins.  She does bookwork maths, science and music theory.  The reason is that we're strongly considering Mulan going to school next year (Year 11, NCEA 1) and this is practice for her (and us).

Teaching: Mulan co-teaches one Chinese language class each week with Mama at Chinese4All.

Miya:

Rock climbing: Rock climbing is Miya's number one activity, and she typically goes to Northern Rocks three times a week, including a lesson each week.

Music: Miya has a private clarinet lesson once a week, as well as saxophone and trumpet lessons at Belmont Music Centre.   She continues to practice her instruments most days and is planning to sit the Grade 4 clarinet exam this year.

Dance: Miya has contemporary dance lessons once a week at Mainly Dance.

Gymnastics: Miya has one lesson a week at North Harbour Gymnastics.

Teaching: Miya co-teaches two Chinese language classes each week with Mama at Chinese4All.

Census at school

Yesterday we completed the Census at School.

This is an online survey that all Year 3-13 school children may complete.

It's a non-profit educationally motivated project hosted by the Stats Department at Auckland Uni and with the help of the Ministry of Education and Stats NZ.

In other words, it's a legit survey for kids to learn about stats, not a commercially-driven data-gathering exercise.

The questions were enjoyable and mostly easy for Mulan and Miya to answer.  The games section was a great idea for a bit of fun competitiveness.

A small challenge for us was that the question-designers mustn't have considered homeschoolers -- a few questions only made sense if the kids physically go to school and then have an "after school".  Those don't apply when schooling is a lifestyle, not an event.

After completing the questions, the girls spent some time on the website going through the questions from previous years and examining the data.  They've now got the Live Dashboard open to look at every once in a while.

Boulder bash

We were at Northern Rocks' Boulder Bash yesterday.

It was the climbing gym's second birthday, and a chance for a big group climbing event.

The idea was that everyone had two and a half hours to climb their best ten climbs (or more, if they wanted), and then add up their points for each climb.

Miya signed up for it (of course!), choosing to miss her Saturday morning music lessons.  Mulan didn't go, preferring to attend her ballet lessons.  Frustratingly, I couldn't climb (elbow is still too sore), so I was Miya's support crew only.

It was an honesty-based system, with everyone marking their own climbs.  Everyone also self-assessed themselves into one of three levels -- beginner, intermediate or advanced.

Intermediate sounded most like Miya, with "You’ve been climbing for a little while, climbing purples and greens, and projecting yellow.  Grade reference V3 – V6".

Miya's been practicing her greens for the past few weeks, and she has six current climbs well practiced (here, here and here).  Then, during Thursday's class she completed two more that she'd been projecting.

So, prior to the start, Miya's ambitious goal was to get all eight of her greens, plus a few purples.

Delightedly, Miya went through each of her greens, ticking them off one by one and doing all eight.

We also found a new green which had been freshly added for the day.  It looked doable, so Miya had a go.  And she got it first try!!  Awesome!

Miya then finished off with four higher-scoring purples.

Her score card was:

(Ignore the circled numbers -- there was a bit of confusion at the beginning with how the climbs were numbered.  It turned out that climbs were labeled with their points value, not their climb number, so our pre-start planning/circling was meaningless.)

It was a great effort, and Miya did even better than we'd hoped.  Miya even came away with a spot prize T-shirt!

We stayed until the end, watching the 22 finalists attempting new unseen climbs.  Wow, they are amazing!

Lots of fun, and a hugely enjoyable day.  (The only downside was that the DJ-hired music was too loud and so exhausting.)

FBI physical fitness test

Magnus Midtbø did the FBI physical fitness test (PFT) last week.

That meant that we had to do it, too.

So, today the four of us went out to our local rubber athletics track (Millennium) and had a go.

There are two versions of the test -- the standard PFT has four parts (push ups, sit ups, 300m, 1.5 mile), while the tactical recruitment programme (TRP) PFT also adds pull ups.

The points allocation table is here:

The idea is that you need to get at least 1 point from each of the parts --if you miss the minimum on any part, then you fail the test.  Also, for the standard test you need to get at least 12 points, while for the TRP test you need to get at least 20 points.

To make it harder, you only have at most 5 minutes rest between doing each part.  Not much recovery time!!

We followed Magnus' version of the test, which was slightly different from this official version, which we found afterwards.  The official version orders the push ups between the two runs, giving more recovery time and making the test easier.

For Magnus' version, push ups and sit ups were as many as you could do in a minute, while pull ups had unlimited time.

So, how did we do?

Miya

• Push ups: 21 (2 points)
• Sit ups: 47 (5 points)
• 300m run: 63.2sec (1 point)
• 1.5 mile run: 13:29min (2 points)
• Pull ups: 6 (6 points)

PFT total points: 10

TRP total points: 16

Mulan

• Push ups: 31 (5 points)
• Sit ups: 46 (4 points)
• 300m run: 50.7sec (9 points)
• 1.5 mile run: 13:26min (2 points)
• Pull ups: 3 (3 points)

PFT total points: 20

TRP total points: 23

Me

• Push ups: 30 (1 point)
• Sit ups: 62 (10 points)
• 300m run: 47.3sec (4 points)
• 1.5 mile run: 12:06min (2 points)
• Pull ups: 0 (0 points)

(I didn't do the pull ups, because of my golfer's elbow soreness.  When I'm uninjured I can do about 13 (6 points).)

PFT total points:17

TRP total points: 17 (or 23?)

Mama

• Push ups: 0 (-2 points)
• Sit ups: 23 (-2 points)
• 300m run: 72sec (-2 points)
• 1.5 mile run: 17:29min (-2 points)
• Pull ups: 0 (-2 points)

PFT total points:-8

TRP total points: -10

Not bad us!!  Mulan and I passed, and Miya was very close to passing.

But before we praise ourselves too much, we have to admit we cheated slightly.  We gave ourselves a bit more time after each of the runs (maybe 10 minutes instead of 5 minutes).  We definitely need to work on our recovery fitness.

(Sadly, we also need to be US citizens and aged between 23 and 36, to be eligible to join the FBI.  Oh well, at least we'd stand a chance to outrun them if we had to!)

More climbing

Northern Rocks reset a few climbs yesterday.

Today, Miya tried them out.  This is her on the new green climb:

The jump was the trickiest bit, and took several attempts.  But once she worked out the movement she was getting it every time.