February Highlights and Goals for March

Highlights of the Month

1. Making a School Choice for the Next Year

In the end of January, we let Smarty skip one day of school so she could have a shadowing day at a private school that we are considering for the next year. She came home super excited and said that she loved the school and she wished she could switch immediately. She liked the fact that each class is very small and students spend time in free discussion without even having to raise their hand. She was also told that she can take any subject, even an AP class, if she passes a placement test. This was music to her ears. because she craves more challenge even if it means more homework. We also received a positive feedback from school's headmaster saying that she would be a good fit for school. So we made a leap, and now Smarty is now officially enrolled. We are excited, apprehensive, and really hope that this school delivers on its promise. We figured that if things don't work out, we can still move Smarty somewhere else for high school, but we just could not imagine another year of her not being even remotely challenged except in her social skills.

2. Zentangles

Smarty attended an interesting art seminar through our local community of gifted kids. They learned to make zentangles and received a nice zentangles kit to keep making them at home. She now spends some time every night creating her zentangle tiles - she says that it helps her relax and get ready for bed.

3. Getting over Sicknesses

Unfortunately, we spent most of our February with one or more of us being sick. Smarty had to miss MATHCOUNTS chapter competitions because she had high fever and felt completely out of it. But things are looking up - we seem to be over the hill, and our energy is returning. We are hoping to stay healthy in March.

4. Watching the Olympic Games

Image Courtesy: Time.com

We enjoyed watching Olympic Games coverage by NBC and getting introduced to many new winter sports. We have a privilege of rooting for four different countries at once - USA, Germany, Belarus, and Russia, so usually we could find someone from our "favorite countries" getting a medal on every given day. Smarty was fascinated to learn that a young winner of ladies' figure skating Alina Zagitova is only 15 year old, and we had a lot of interesting conversations on what it takes to be an Olympic athlete. For the record, Smarty has absolutely no desire to invest this heavily in any sport or, in fact, in any other activity. She is still searching for her passion.

Goals for March 2018

The word of the month is to Reach. Smarty will attempt a big goal of taking SAT as a 7th grader. She worked hard (for her) by spending about 30 min a day since December on Khan Academy or on Math SAT preparation book that I bought for her. I helped explaining some math topics to her - trigonometry caused some tears initially, but the very next day she was tackling all SAT trigonometry problems without hesitation. I am very curious to see how she will do. I will reach by stepping in to lead a pretty challenging and complex project at work and working with very senior people in the organization to make it successful. And we will all reach to try and spend more time with our friends.

Your Turn

What are your March plans?