Recently Erin performed at the really big theatre in Nelson. What a great experience!

In terms of "schoolish pursuits", Erin now has a few workbooks on the go. She wrapped up the last of her Miquon Math program over the summer and has continued with Singapore Math in fits and starts. She's now comfortable with multi-digit multiplication and long division and has moved quickly from Singapore 3A to 4A in the past couple of months, and is showing no sign of slowing down. She's also working with integers and polynomials in the "Alge-Tiles" algebra program. She's made grade strides in printing and cursive handwriting in the past six months using the Getty-Dubay Italic workbook series. She does some music theory workbook stuff from time to time, and a bit of musicology work to accompany her piano workbook. We've also delved a bit into some systematic world history using Susan Wise-Bauer's "Story of the World" as a basis, and the Kingfisher Encyclopedia of history, various other reference books, projects and historical fiction to augment our readings.

All this schoolish stuff gets done when the whim strikes her, though, not in any systematic way. Sometimes she'll nail down a few weeks worth of Singapore Math in a day or two and then not touch it for a month or more. That's just how she is... an all-or-nothing kid.

Music continues to form the central, structured part of Erin's life. She spends at least 2 hours a day practising violin and piano. Her piano studies have taken her into Royal Conservatory Grade 5 and her violin studies to Suzuki Book 6. She's involved in a youth choir, Suzuki violin group classes, chamber ensembles from duos to octets on both violin and piano, and the local Community Orchestra. Most of her friendships are musically-based. Recently she's had the opportunity to accompany ballet dancers "en pointe" on piano and will be soloing the Bach Double violin concerto at the end of April.

She's also taking recreational figure-skating and gymnastics, each once a week, and participating in a series of art workshops where she's exploring drawing, painting and print-making. Writing has become a passion of Erin's. She's really really good at descriptive storytelling driven by her inspiration and her immense experience with reading novels. Her aspirations are very sophisticated, but her planning skills aren't quite up to the task, so she's working away on her own time, progressing and dealing with the frustration of novels-in-progress that seem to devolve into chaos or dead ends after chapter 2.

It wasn't always easy to get a good view, but otherwise being the youngest in the class was no problem for Erin.

Another new discovery is Boomerang Audiomagazine for Kids a public-affairs and story-telling cassette-tape periodical. We managed to snag a bundle of back-issues and Erin has been broadening her horizons by regular listening and re-listening.

Piano and violin work continued throughout the summer of 2002, with a week of intensive lessons and ensemble work at the Valhalla Summer School of Music providing a focus in mid-August. Erin and her piano-buddy Leah (whom she'd met at the same workshop last year) spent an amazing week together, playing, hiking, rehearsing duets, giggling, sleeping out together in the little cabin, and deepening their friendship by exploring their many, many common interests. They recorded a CD containing four of their duet ventures... classical, impressionistic and jazzy. Erin also played violin in the intermediate orchestra, sang in family choir, and participated in the intermediate-level piano classes.

A family trip to Ontario during September gave rise to lots of new educational opportunities. We visited a 17th-century restored Jesuit Mission site called "Sainte-Marie-Among-the-Hurons", spend amazing days at the Toronto Zoo and the Ontario Science Centre, and renewed relationships with extended family. Erin also managed to get in a lot of swimming, improving her skills greatly.