Ashley, Math and Science

The second week of Summer, Ashley was off to a week long summer day camp.  The camp was part of the engineering program that she has been doing all year through Northern Illinois University.  The theme of this year's camp was renewable energy, focusing specifically on wind energy.  The campers spent all week learning about wind energy and taking field trips to wind farms, a wind mill, a solar powered home, and then ended the week at Motorola, the company who sponsors the program. 

Ashley had a good time and learned a lot.  I think she was really grateful to have one of her best friends also going to the camp, so they got to spend a lot of time together. 

Ashley is really excelling in math right now and Dave and I are very proud of her and want to encourage her to keep it up.  I don't think I mentioned it before but at the end of the school year, Ashley competed in our school district's Junior High Math Competition.  Entry is optional, but this year Ashley and some friends decided to join the team competition. 

The day of the competition was a little crazy because it was also the same night as Ashley's final game in the regional soccer tournament.  Because of rainy weather the game had been postponed and was reschedule the same day as the math competition.  This meant that we had to rush Ashley from the soccer game straight to the math competition.  She had to change in the car and skip dinner.  She missed the start of the competition but fortunately her "event" wasn't first.  She basically ran in, was handed a pencil and had to start taking a test.  Not exactly, the zen prep you would hope to have before a competition, but oh well.

After the tests were completed I met up with Ashley to wait for the results and award ceremony.  She pretty much told me not to expect anything, the test was really hard and she didn't feel like her team did well.  So it was a BIG surprise when her team was called for 1st place among the 7th graders!   She was shocked but also so excited (so excited that she tossed her phone somewhere, never to be seen again.)  In fact, her school pretty much dominated the awards, I think they took 1st in every category and took 2nd and 3rd place with the exception of two or three times.

Now we can say we have a "math winner" in our house!  Seriously, this might be a first on both sides of our family.  Way to overcome genetics Ashley!